------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*Clinton Welcomes Frail Vajpayee to White House
*Clinton, Vajpayee Pledge Stronger U.S.-Indian Ties
*Vilifying Pakistan
*SADDAM'S SABER-RATTLING
*Saddam warned not to repeat past actions
*Russians Not Paying for Electricity
*Is Another Energy Crisis Ahead?
*Guilty Plea, Release Leave Unresolved Questions in Lee Case
*. . . Secrecy on Trial
*In the Wake of Wen Ho Lee . . .
*The Prosecution of Wen Ho Lee
*Bush, Gore differ on global role
*The Museum of the American Century

MILITARY
*Western Leaders Face Trial in Belgrade Monday
*U.N. Forsakes Effort to Curb Poppy Growth
*Two Hundred Rebels Surrender in India
*S. Korea to start work on railway to North
*War Has No Rules for Russian Forces
*Ex-POW's identity may have been discovered
*Space Station Astronauts Install Treadmill in Orbit
*An International Court
*After the tank
*Taking the pilot out of the cockpit
*Abrams M1A2 Tank
*The Army will give J.C. Slaughter an honorable discharge

OTHER
*The seven-turbine, 11.5-megawatt Madison Wind Project
*The Chesapeake Bay Foundation suit against the federal government
*Rich Nations Pledge to Double Countries Getting Debt Relief
*Now that's a model prisoner
*Investigation of Ex-Chief of the C.I.A. Is Broadened
*U.S. acquires reputed terrorism guide

ACTIVISTS
*Farm Aid cause continues with weekend events, concert
*Farm Aid Cause Continues with Sunday Concert
*Gandhi Likeness Unveiled by Clinton

*

-------- NUCLEAR (by country)

-------- india / pakistan

Clinton Welcomes Frail Vajpayee to White House

Yahoo News
Friday September 15
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000915/ts/india_usa_dc_5.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton (news - web sites) on Friday welcomed a frail looking Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to the White House for talks on nuclear tensions in South Asia and economic and social cooperation.

In an abbreviated welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn, which dispensed with the customary review of troops in a nod to Vajpayee's health, Clinton vowed to work with Vajpayee to seek peace in South Asia.

``We will talk about our common interests in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons, and the broader consequences of proliferation in South Asia,'' Clinton said after a 19-gun salute.

``At the same time, we welcome India's commitment to forego nuclear testing until the treaty banning all nuclear testing comes into force.''

Clinton said he and Vajpayee would also discuss areas where the United States and India need to work together to fight AIDS (news - web sites), reduce poverty, protect the global environment and open up the global economy.

``No matter our differences -- and two such large and diverse countries will always have some differences ... if we speak with care and listen with respect, we will find common ground and achieve common aims,'' Clinton said.

Vajpayee said talks would focus on economic cooperation, science and technology as well as a discussion on regional and global issues.

``This is a time of new hope and new opportunities in Indian-American ties,'' he said.

The White House said earlier it had canceled a joint news conference with Clinton and Vajpayee at the Indian government's request because of the premier's poor health.

The 73-year-old prime minister's health has been the subject of media speculation since he cut short his stay at a party convention last month because of pain in his knees. Vajpayee is due to have knee replacement surgery after returning from the United States.

Vajpayee trimmed his two-week visit to the United States by two days on the advice of doctors, forcing him to skip a scheduled stopover in San Francisco.

Clinton will host an official dinner for the Indian prime minister on Sunday at the White House.

---

Clinton, Vajpayee Pledge Stronger U.S.-Indian Ties

Yahoo News
Friday September 15
By Steve Holland
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000915/ts/india_usa_dc.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton (news - web sites) and a frail-looking Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee held talks on Friday on nuclear tensions in South Asia and ways to develop the long-term relationship between their countries.

``I think we have worked hard together to move our relationship from one of too little contact and too much suspicion to one of genuine efforts to build a long-term partnership that is in the interest of the people of India and the people of the United States,'' Clinton said.

Clinton and Vajpayee met for more than an hour in the Oval Office. The Indian leader's visit came six months after Clinton made his own trek to India. That trip warmed ties after a long chill rooted in Cold War tensions.

Vajpayee's apparent frail health overshadowed his four-day official visit, which is to conclude on Sunday night with a White House dinner in his honor.

A welcoming ceremony on the White House South Lawn was abbreviated and an afternoon joint news conference was canceled. Addressing reporters in the Oval Office during a picture-taking session, Vajpayee interrupted his comments with long pauses.

``With your visit to India, a beginning has already been made,'' Vajpayee told Clinton. ``We have to pursue that path.''

The 73-year-old prime minister's health has been the subject of media speculation since he cut short his stay at a party convention last month because of pain in his knees. Vajpayee is due to have knee replacement surgery after returning from the United States.

Vajpayee trimmed his two-week visit to the United States by two days on the advice of doctors, forcing him to skip a scheduled stopover in San Francisco.

Clinton vowed to work with Vajpayee to seek peace in South Asia. Earlier this year he called South Asia possibly the world's most dangerous place because of nuclear tensions between India and Pakistan and their clashes over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

``We will talk about our common interests in slowing the spread of nuclear weapons, and the broader consequences of proliferation in South Asia,'' Clinton said during the welcoming ceremony. ``At the same time, we welcome India's commitment to forego nuclear testing until the treaty banning all nuclear testing comes into force.''

Clinton said he and Vajpayee would also discuss areas where the United States and India need to work together to fight AIDS (news - web sites), reduce poverty, protect the global environment and open up the global economy.

``No matter our differences -- and two such large and diverse countries will always have some differences -- if we speak with care and listen with respect, we will find common ground and achieve common aims,'' Clinton said.

Vajpayee said talks would focus on economic cooperation, science and technology as well as a discussion of regional and global issues.

---

Vilifying Pakistan

Washington Post
Monday, September 18, 2000 ; A19
By Robert McFarlane
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25622-2000Sep17.html

For those who have followed events in South Asia over the past 50 years it is painful to see a long-time friend and ally being unfairly demonized ["Up the Ante on Pakistan," op-ed, Sept. 11]. For Arthur H. Davis to blame Pakistan for turmoil in that region and to call for its designation as a "terrorist state" is perverse and unjustified under any rational analysis of the facts. Worse, it contributes to polarization at a time when our country needs to engage both India and Pakistan in a sustained trialogue founded on goodwill and objectivity.

Recently I met with Pakistan's chief executive, General Pervez Musharraf, in New York. Having met with each of his elected predecessors on many occasions in the past 15 years, I can say that he stands well above them in terms of honesty and integrity and a devotion to seeking peace and elevating the welfare of the Pakistani people.

In our meeting he reaffirmed his wish to conclude a negotiated peace with India in Kashmir and talked in detail about his strategy for achieving political and economic reform in Pakistan. Indeed, much already has been achieved toward these ends and much more can be done under his stewardship with encouragement and modest support from the United States and others.

Our discussion of Kashmir focused on the presence of a half- million Indian troops in the valley and the decade-long struggle by the Kashmiris, who face humiliation and oppression on a daily basis. Musharraf assured me that Pakistan wants a peaceful solution to this desperate situation, one that respects the wishes of the Kashmiri people. If India truly respects international norms and democratic principles and acts on its earlier commitment to uphold the 1949 United Nations Security Council resolution prescribing a plebiscite for the Kashmiris to decide on accession to India or Pakistan, Musharraf surely will endorse the outcome.

Six weeks ago, a leading guerrilla group in Kashmir, the Hizbul Mujaheddin, proposed a three-month cease-fire in a genuine effort to move the struggle from the battlefield to negotiations. To his credit, the response of Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was encouraging and offered a dialogue based on insaniyat (humanity). Regrettably, at the insistence of his hard-line partisans, the terms for talks escalated to include the precondition that any negotiations be held within the framework of the Indian constitution. To ask Kashmiris to accept the Indian constitution is to preempt the purpose of talks: to achieve a solution that meets the aspirations of the Kashmiri people in accordance with the U.N. resolution.

The United States has important interests in South Asia. With respect to Pakistan, our interests go beyond support for a staunch ally in the Cold War--an ally who made enormous sacrifices measured in lives, the displacement of more than 3 million refugees, and the spawning of a ruinous drug trade from Afghanistan. Since that victory, we have essentially dismissed that sacrifice.

Both Pakistan and India could someday benefit enormously as the avenue of commerce for bringing the wealth of central Asia to market in Europe and Japan. As for our interests in India, nurturing the successful development of the world's largest democracy needs no further elaboration.

For these interests to be advanced, however, the United States must be--and be seen to be--a firm and objective friend to both countries. The so-called new economy is passing these countries by. Without our help they both risk becoming failed states. Sanctions and shrill rhetoric get us nowhere. It is time for the United States to lead on this matter.

The writer was national security adviser to President Reagan from October 1983 to December 1985.

-------- iraq

SADDAM'S SABER-RATTLING

New York Post
Sunday, September 17, 2000
By URI DAN
http://www.nypost.com/09172000/commentary/10822.htm

SADDAM HUSSEIN is roaring again, charging Kuwait with "stealing Iraqi oil" by pumping it from rich fields near their mutual border.

Kuwait angrily replied to Saddam's charge last week that Kuwait couldn't steal what belonged to Kuwait, and blamed Iraq of trying to trigger another Persian Gulf crisis - just as oil prices are on the rise.

Since Saddam made similar accusations prior to his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, his verbal belligerence set off alarms across the Mideast. U.S. and Israeli intelligence have been closely following his steps.

The latest official report to the Israeli foreign office indicates it is no longer clear who really runs Iraq:

"Saddam is ill, allegedly with lymphatic cancer, and has appointed a family council headed by his son Koussai.

"Recently, Saddam lost his ability to concentrate, and his personal aide, Abed Hamoud, directs daily matters of state," the report said.

It also emphasized that, regardless of who's in charge, Iraq has been refusing to allow U.N. arms inspectors on its territory - aided by France, which supports Baghdad's claim "that the inspection team is not yet prepared to carry out its mission - although it is well prepared."

Last week, I asked Prime Minister Ehud Barak's chief of staff, Danni Yatom, what's keeping the inspectors out of Iraq.

"Saddam rejects the idea, and he's backed by France and Russia," was the reply.

He added that Iraq was also helped when the former American arms inspector Scott Ritter "surprisingly" changed his mind and defended Saddam.

Since the last U.S. and British bombing of Iraq in December 1998, there have been no arms inspections - allowing Saddam to continue a secret effort to rebuild his arsenal with ground-to-ground Housseini missiles.

These long-range weapons are described as improved versions of the Scud missiles that Saddam used against Israel during the Gulf War.

Saddam also has been secretly buying material in Europe and Russia to develop nuclear-arms capability.

Even Slobodan Milosevic is helping him: Yugoslav missile experts visited Baghdad in July.

Milosevic's ties to Saddam go back a long time and, according to intelligence reports, during last year's NATO bombing campaign, the Yugoslav leader got advice from Saddam on how to weather the raids.

Israeli intelligence analysts point out the cynical double game Saddam has been playing.

On the one hand, he complains about Iraqi infants dying from lack of food and medical supplies, allegedly because of the U.S.-supported sanctions.

But through the oil-for-food program and other means, Iraq has sold some $30 billion worth of oil since 1996.

Saddam allocated only $7 billion of the revenue for food and only $1 billion for medical supplies - leaving a huge amount to bribe and buy his way back to a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

The last known attempt to eliminate him was in the works in 1992 - when President Bush was finishing up his term and Barak was head of the Israeli armed forces.

A special Israeli unit planned to assassinate Saddam with a missile. But during training for the mission, it misfired and killed five commandos - and the plan was dropped.

It's not surprising then that Saddam is making his latest moves against Kuwait just as America is consumed by another presidential election. He survived George Bush, his arch-enemy, and he may just survive Bill Clinton as well.

---

Saddam warned not to repeat past actions

USA Today
09/17/00- Updated 01:43 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm

SINGAPORE - Claiming that the United States and Britain could defeat any threat, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen on Sunday warned Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to avoid taking ''any kind of aggressive action'' against his country's neighbors. Tension increased last week in the Middle East as Iraq accused Kuwait of drilling wells that allow it to siphon Iraqi oil and warned that it would move to halt its smaller neighbor's action. ''He should understand that the United States and our British friends are fully prepared to take whatever action is necessary to prevent him from trying to repeat his past actions,'' Cohen said. Friction between the United States and Iraq has been rising, mainly over renewed efforts to have U.N. inspectors search for hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

-------- russia

Russians Not Paying for Electricity

Associated Press
September 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Short-Circuit.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- As the electricity monopoly in the world's largest country, Russia's Unified Energy Systems has plenty of prodigious statistics -- including what could be the world's longest list of deadbeat customers.

Not only do they owe the partly state-owned UES an estimated $5 billion, but they include some of the country's most secret sites, including nuclear missile bases and the Plesetsk space launch facility.

The utility's attempts to collect its bills grabbed national attention last week when one of its local branches cut off power to a missile base that owed $683,000. The base retaliated by sending soldiers to a switching station to turn the lights back on.

In the wake of that dispute, the Plesetsk cosmodrome announced it had received a warning that switchoffs were imminent unless it paid $1.6 million in arrears. A missile base in Altai said it was being pressured to pay up on bills exceeding $180,000.

UES later ordered its subsidiaries not to cut power to strategic military units. But if that order quelled the uproar, it did not resolve the company's debt crisis.

The utility is caught in a web of financial problems that seem as complex as the 1.8 million miles of power lines it manages. It is both a victim of Russia's economic troubles and a contributor to them.

UES can't collect from many state-run installations, such as the military bases, because those operations are themselves underfunded. Even when it does collect, it's often in barter or in-kind services.

In the first half of this year, only 62 percent of the payments to UES were in cash, board member Andrei Trapeznikov said in a statement. Nonetheless, that's an improvement over past years, when cash collections were reported as low as 10 percent.

UES complains it has to sell electricity for unreasonably low rates, about 1 cent per kilowatt-hour. ``I am not proud of the epithet that UES is the world's largest and also the world's cheapest power company,'' chief executive Anatoly Chubais said in a letter to shareholders.

According to UES, power demand in Russia is rising at about 3 percent a year while the utility's troubles reduce its ability to increase supply, and it predicts demand will exceed capacity within about five years.

But charging more realistic rates could be catastrophic for Russia's economy, where many businesses survive by being able to sell their products at low prices made possible in part because of low power rates. Analysts say the energy-intensive aluminum industry, one of Russia's major exporters, could be especially vulnerable.

Industries that are effectively subsidized in this way are at the heart of what many Western economists have taken to calling Russia's ``virtual economy.''

According to one of the scholars who popularized the phrase, Barry Ickes of the University of Pennsylvania, rationalizing UES operations is the key to bringing Russia out of its economic bind.

``But you would need to have in place policies to cope with the political byproducts,'' such as wide unemployment that would be caused by raising rates, he said.

The Russian government, plagued by low tax collections, is unlikely to be able to marshal the money for that, he noted.

``At the end of the whole chain, the state hasn't been able to collect taxes,'' agreed William Browder of the Hermitage Fund, which has invested in UES.

The Russian state holds 52.5 percent of the utility's shares and foreigners own about 30 percent of the stock.

Chubais has proposed a complicated restructuring plan that he argues would bring more efficiency to the electricity market. Generating facilities would be spun off into some 70 regional operations while transmission and distribution facilities would remain national.

The plan has been widely criticized. Analysts say it would accomplish little and could be a new opportunity for unscrupulous entrepreneurs to grab pieces of an important enterprise at bargain prices. That happened at many other state-owned firms when Chubais was chief of the Russian government's privatization program.

``We see it as a thinly disguised attempt at asset-stripping,'' Browder said.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Is Another Energy Crisis Ahead?

Washington Post
Sunday, September 17, 2000 ; H01
By Kenneth Bredemeier Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21134-2000Sep16.html

This winter the mailman will be delivering markedly higher heating bills throughout much of the country, including the Washington area.

Those who use natural gas--the dominant heating fuel in the Washington area and throughout the United States--face a 27 percent increase. Heating oil customers, particularly in the Northeast where 35 percent of homeowners use the fuel to warm their houses, may have to pay more than $2 a gallon--twice the current price--as the days grow shorter and temperatures plunge.

Motorists get hit in the wallet every time they pull into a service station: They now typically pay more than $1.60 a gallon for gas, and the days of 90-cent-a-gallon gas--yes, it was just last year--are but a distant memory. At least that's better than in England, France and Belgium where motorists are waiting in long lines to buy $4-a-gallon gas, only to find that some stations have run out.

Is this the start of an energy crisis?

Many energy analysts and government economists say not, that supplies of various forms of energy will prove sufficient over the next few months, but that the costs will continue to follow the law of supply and demand. When there's not an excess of a fuel available--and numerous types of fuel reserves are quite low--consumers will likely think the product costs too much, at least compared with the prices they've been accustomed to paying.

But as winter approaches, several loosely connected events that spanned the globe over the past couple of years have heightened awareness of energy in our lives and reminded us of a lesson learned in the 1970s: Energy prices can be volatile, unpredictable and can reverberate throughout the economy.

As Philip Verleger Jr., a partner with the Brattle Group, a Cambridge, Mass., economic consulting firm, concluded, "Consumers will have to spend more on energy. They will have less to spend on other things."

On top of the triple-whammy of higher natural gas, heating oil and gasoline prices, consumers are also vulnerable to the vagaries of the electricity market because the industry has been in the midst of deregulation.

While California and other states have struggled with power prices during the adjustment to the new competitive environment, electric utilities locally have maintained stability. Potomac Electric Power Co. says its 621,000 residential customers in the District and suburban Maryland--about 15 percent to 20 percent of whom heat their homes with electricity--will find their bills about 5.5 percent lower this winter, assuming they use the same amount of electricity as last year. Across the Potomac River, Dominion Virginia Power's customers in Northern Virginia are likely to see their bills stay about the same.

Much of the current energy pricing is out of consumers' hands, analysts say, because the United States has chosen, to a large degree, to remain dependent on oil pumped out of distant lands controlled by OPEC nations.

The 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed last weekend to increase its oil production by 800,000 barrels a day in hopes of pushing the price down to $28 or so. Even so, oil prices hit a new 10-year high on Friday, closing at $35.92 a barrel amid worries about tensions between Iraq and Kuwait. These are prices not seen since the days of the military buildup before the Persian Gulf War in November 1990.

Analysts say that 21 months ago, when oil was below $10 a barrel and natural gas was at $2 per 1,000 cubic feet, drilling companies, many of which produce both fuels, began to curtail their exploration as a result of dwindling revenue.

The OPEC nations cut their production at the time to force prices upward--and now they have more than tripled. Private exploration for more natural gas in the United States, chiefly in the Gulf of Mexico and several southern and southwestern states, only grew after drillers concluded that the demand was significant enough and they had sufficient capital to look for more.

Peggy Laramie, spokeswoman for the American Gas Association, the natural-gas utilities' trade group, said the low price of gas at the time contributed to a feeling by producers that there was plenty of supply, so they cut back on drilling for about nine months, from August 1998 to April 1999. Fewer than 400 rigs were drilling at the time, although now that figure has topped 800.

With little new natural gas exploration, the flow through the supply chain slowed, of course, even as demand increased in the United States, Europe and Asia.

The result was predictable: Higher natural-gas prices at the wellhead and, over time, bigger bills for consumers. The $2 wellhead price has now risen to $5. Laramie said the last time wellhead prices were this high was in 1985.

As Verleger said, "Demand was growing. We didn't pick up the supply and--whoops, there's a problem."

In the Washington area, where perhaps 70 percent of all homeowners heat with natural gas, Washington Gas Light Co. estimates that its residential customers will see the typical monthly bill jump $26, to $112.50, in the November-to-April period, a 27 percent increase over last winter.

Laramie said the gas utilities' trade group believes that with the renewed exploration, natural gas prices "will be moderating by spring, but we don't want to over-promise."

The price of oil and its derivative products is expected to remain volatile, depending on a host of factors, including demand by consuming nations, the severity of the upcoming winter months after a string of three relatively mild winters, and how much more oil OPEC nations might decide to produce if prices stay high.

This mix of factors leaves the analysts, OPEC and government economists using a lot of "ifs" and "buts" and "possibilities," but mentioning few certainties.

OPEC President Ali Rodriguez predicted this past week that oil prices could reach $40 a barrel this winter, even if only for a relatively short time.

"Crude oil prices are very high and will remain very high throughout the rest of the year," said John Lichtblau, chairman of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, which is funded by oil companies. In terms of gasoline, a shortage is unlikely, "but prices will be high," he said. "It can go back to $1.40 a gallon because of more production and lower crude prices. It won't start right now, maybe later this year or early next year."

But with heating oil, he said, an unusually cold winter in the Northeast could bring about problems, given low inventories. "I don't see a shortage, but prices will be very high."

Verleger was less certain.

"We do have a problem," he said. "I think we're going to see high prices this winter for heating oil and natural gas. But I'm not certain about it. I'm not willing to go out and say it's going to be awful."

With oil prices at record levels, President Clinton last week came under increasing pressure to tap the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, nearly 570 million barrels of crude oil stashed at four sites in Louisiana and Texas.

The reserve is intended for use in cases where the president determines there is a national supply emergency. High prices alone do not qualify. The White House says all options to combat the current low reserves of various fuels and high prices are under consideration. In the past, however, the oil reserve has been tapped to combat mechanical breakdowns in the oil industry's pipeline system or to trade lower-quality oil for a better grade.

"If the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is released, that would knock $15 a barrel off the price," Verleger said. "One piece of news like that and this [crude oil price] will drop like a rock."

At least for the winter months, electric utilities generally have found a way around the high price of oil and natural gas that some of them must use during peak-demand periods in the summer to generate electricity. They're able to focus their winter generation on cheaper fuels--coal, nuclear and hydroelectric power.

"That's cheaper fuel and fuel that's less subject to the volatility of the world oil and world natural-gas markets," said Chuck Linderman, director of energy generation and supply policy for the Edison trade group. "Generally we're in good shape on supply."

-------- new mexico

Guilty Plea, Release Leave Unresolved Questions in Lee Case

Washington Poat
Sunday, September 17, 2000 ; A12
By Vernon Loeb and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A12846-2000Sep15

After nine months in jail, the Taiwanese American nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee went free last week after pleading guilty to removing classified information from Los Alamos National Laboratory. But many of the key questions about his case remain unanswered.

Under the terms of his plea agreement, Lee is required to submit to detailed questioning by the FBI. But the government may keep his answers secret, on the grounds of his privacy and the nation's security.

Among the central issues that remain in dispute are whether China stole U.S. nuclear secrets, why the government investigation focused on Lee, why he copied data about nuclear weapons onto portable tapes, and how important the data may be.

While definitive answers may not yet be possible, recent court hearings and interviews with Lee's colleagues have provided some new information. It now appears, for example, that Lee's motive in making the tapes may have been to ensure that he could continue to do unclassified work in his specialty, hydrodynamics, at other laboratories if he lost his job at Los Alamos.

Lee's case began in 1996 as an investigation, code-named Kindred Spirit, into China's alleged theft of U.S. nuclear secrets. But the FBI never found evidence that he had passed secrets to any foreign country, and he was never charged with spying.

After the espionage investigation stalled, Lee was fired last year from Los Alamos, where he had worked for nearly 20 years. The FBI then searched his office and found that he had transferred or "downloaded" data from the lab's classified computer system to his unsecure desktop computer and 10 tapes, seven of which were missing.

This triggered a second investigation and, eventually, Lee's prosecution on 59 counts of mishandling classified information, an indictment that fell short of espionage but still carried a possible life sentence.

Moreover, prosecutors argued successfully that Lee should not be released on bail. While awaiting trial, he was initially held in solitary confinement, with a light bulb burning 24 hours a day and shackles on his legs during a single hour of daily exercise.

Meanwhile, his defense lawyers chipped away at the prosecution's arguments. Last month, they forced an FBI agent to admit that, contrary to his prior testimony, Lee had not lied to a colleague about the downloading. They also found experts who questioned the secrecy of the information.

With their case in trouble, prosecutors agreed to a plea bargain. Last Wednesday, Lee admitted his guilt on a single felony count. U.S. District Judge James A. Parker sentenced Lee to the time he had served, apologizing profusely for the "demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions" of Lee's confinement. The judge said he had been "led astray" by the executive branch of government.

Did China Steal U.S. Nuclear Secrets?

Suspicions of espionage began with nine underground nuclear tests conducted by China and monitored by U.S. satellites and seismic stations from 1990 to 1995. They indicated that China had, in a short time, developed both a neutron bomb and a very compact weapon similar to America's W-88, the warhead on the latest U.S. sub-launched intercontinental missile, the Trident II.

U.S. intelligence analysts wondered whether Beijing's scientists could have made such rapid progress on their own. Notra Trulock III, then head of the Energy Department's intelligence unit, became even more alarmed when he saw a Chinese military document that had been provided in 1995 by a purported defector who walked into the U.S. Embassy in Taiwan.

The "walk-in document," dated 1988, contained a chart on seven U.S. warheads, including the weight, range, yield, dimensions and a line drawing of each.

In 1995, Trulock convened a group of five scientists to review the evidence of espionage. Some members dissented, but Trulock began an administrative inquiry into who was responsible, and he quickly focused on Los Alamos, where the W-88 was designed. In 1996, he started briefing senior officials, telling them that Chinese espionage had resulted in the loss of important design data on several U.S. nuclear weapons, particularly the W-88.

Trulock has maintained in congressional testimony that his findings were upheld by an intelligence community assessment delivered in April 1999 by CIA analyst Robert Walpole. But the Walpole panel's findings were not so cut and dried. The assessment said that spying had "probably accelerated" China's nuclear program but that the Chinese were "more likely" to have used stolen data "to inform their own program than to replicate U.S. weapons designs."

Moreover, the panel said China gained information not just from espionage, but also from "contact with U.S. and other countries' scientists, conferences and publications, unauthorized media disclosures, declassified U.S. weapons information, and Chinese indigenous development." The "relative contribution of each" of these sources, it concluded, "cannot be determined."

Both of Trulock's conclusions--that China stole weapons designs and that the information probably came from Los Alamos--have been challenged by scientists and intelligence experts.

Paul Robinson, director of Sandia National Laboratories and former head of nuclear weapons development at Los Alamos, said the data in the walk-in document were basic "geometrical information that is shared with U.S. explosive ordnance people around the world," meaning that "hundreds of agencies of the U.S. government had documents with the same information."

Former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which reviewed the espionage allegations last year, said in an interview last week, "It is my belief that there was no espionage" involved with the W-88 data obtained by the Chinese. As far as China's new, smaller warhead, Rudman said, "What they did, they did on their own."

Why Did Government Focus on Wen Ho Lee?

The Energy Department's internal probe, prompted by the "walk-in document," began in 1995. Trulock started with all Los Alamos personnel who had knowledge of the W-88 data, then determined which of them had traveled to China in the 1980s. The resulting list contained 12 names, including at least one other Chinese American. Lee's name, however, was at the top.

Trulock insists that his report, sent to the FBI in early 1996, did not single out Lee. But in May 1999, when Congress was in an uproar over the espionage allegations, Trulock testified that by spring 1996, "we had completed our administrative inquiry and had identified a potential suspect."

Lee was at the top of the list because he had traveled to China in 1986 and 1988, and because he and his wife, Sylvia, had taken an active role in greeting visiting Chinese scientists. She had also accompanied Lee on his 1986 trip. What Trulock did not know is that Sylvia Lee had been helping the FBI with information about the Chinese.

After Trulock submitted his report, the FBI picked up the case and continued to focus on Lee. A year earlier, a confidential informant had reported that Lee appeared friendly with a senior Chinese weapons designer who was visiting Los Alamos. Since Lee had never reported any contacts with the visitor, as Los Alamos security rules required, the bureau was suspicious.

In November 1998, Trulock appeared at two closed sessions of a select committee, chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), that was looking into Chinese espionage. In January 1999, four months before public release of the Cox committee's report, word began to leak out to journalists that a Los Alamos scientist with an Asian surname was under investigation. On March 6, 1999, the New York Times published a front-page story that said in part: "Government investigators had identified a suspect, an American scientist at Los Alamos. . . . This suspect 'stuck out like a sore thumb,' said one official."

Two days later, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson directed the University of California, which administers Los Alamos, to fire Lee. Richardson said in a recent interview that Lee was discharged because he had not been honest with lab officials, had failed to report fully on his meetings with Chinese scientists, and had misplaced information. In addition, Richardson said, "there was pressure to make an example of him."

Why Did He Make The Computer Tapes?

As they celebrated his return home last week, some of Lee's supporters remained convinced that his downloads were dumb but not sinister, most likely performed to back up his work against computer crashes.

Robert Vrooman, Los Alamos National Laboratory's former counterintelligence director, does not buy that theory, and neither do many other nuclear weapons scientists at the lab.

Vrooman does not believe Lee is a spy. But "he was up to something--I'm puzzled, and I want to know what," said Vrooman, a former CIA operations officer.

Working secretively, often late at night and on weekends, Lee downloaded 1.4 gigabytes of data, a little more than half of which--800 megabytes--was classified. That's the equivalent of 430,000 pages, a stack of paper 134 feet high.

Most officials at the lab now accept the proposition that Lee's downloads were at least partly related to a notice he received in 1993 that he might be laid off, since that is when his intensive downloading began.

A number of lab officials and scientists now also believe Lee wanted the computer programs or "codes," not to give them to a foreign power, but to continue using them in his field of expertise, hydrodynamics, the study of how solid materials behave as they turn to fluids under extreme pressure.

"The prosecutors have said that he wanted to create his own personal library of nuclear weapons codes," said one former X Division scientist who worked directly with Lee. "But these codes have lots of other uses."

Lee is an expert in armor-piercing projectiles, a subject about which he published many unclassified papers as a Los Alamos scientist, his former colleague said. Without portions of the programs he downloaded, the former colleague added, he would not have been able to do the calculations needed to continue writing such scholarly papers, and would not have been able to reproduce the algorithms on his own.

"Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of hydrodynamics is unclassified," added Chris Mechels, another former Los Alamos scientist who knew Lee in the lab's top-secret X Division. "It's only classified when you put it in a weapons code. So a reasonable hypothesis would be, he was making a copy of his unclassified work in a classified product."

He should have known better, Mechels said, but that's a far cry from spying for China.

How Important Was Information on Tapes?

One Los Alamos weapons scientist, Stephen Younger, testified in court that the tapes represented "a complete portable nuclear design capability," information so sensitive, he said, that it could "change the global strategic balance." Another scientist, John Richter, scoffed at Younger's claims, saying 99 percent of what's on the tapes is unclassified science.

But scientists inside and outside the nation's nuclear weapons complex say the information Lee downloaded is enormously sensitive and should be safeguarded at the highest possible security level.

One senior lab official said the computer programs are valuable, not because of the basic science embedded in them, but because they have been refined and linked to simulate an entire thermonuclear weapon, from primary to secondary detonation.

Just because a dictionary is unclassified, the official said, doesn't mean everything written in the English language is unclassified too. "It's how you put the poem together, how you put the novel together," the official said, adding that there are only about 25 people left in America who can seamlessly link the codes to re-create a full fusion reaction.

On the seven missing tapes, Lee downloaded four complete weapons codes, A, B, D and I. Code B, which simulates the primary stage of a nuclear weapon, and Code A, which simulates the secondary stage, were among the most modern codes at the time Lee downloaded them, used on an almost daily basis to evaluate the reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile.

In addition to those computer programs, Lee also downloaded complete data sets, known as input decks, necessary to run the programs. While the codes describe the physical processes that take place inside a weapon, an input deck describes the geometry of a specific warhead or bomb.

Written in Fortran, each code is hundreds of thousands of lines long. While the codes would be unintelligible to a layman, a graduate student in physics trained in Fortran could print out the material and read it like a textbook.

As a general rule, scientists say, the codes Lee downloaded would be of little value to a nonnuclear state, of moderate value to a fledgling nuclear nation, such as Pakistan, and of extreme value to an advanced nuclear nation such as China, where scientists could use the codes to better understand the yield-to-weight ratio of U.S. weapons, as well as their designcharacteristics and their vulnerabilities.

One Los Alamos official said the codes Lee downloaded offer the fullest description in the world of how materials behave in energy domains ranging from a firecracker to a star.

To any other nuclear nation, the official said, "that would be of great value."

--------

. . . Secrecy on Trial

Washington Post
Sunday, September 17, 2000 ; B07
By Kenneth C. Bass III
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17716-2000Sep16.html

The president was justified in being troubled over the Kafkaesque course of the Wen Ho Lee trial. The bizarre twists are enough to trouble anyone concerned about the administration of justice and protection of the national security. But beneath those symptoms of a system out of control lies a far broader issue.

The Justice Department's decision to accept a guilty plea to only one of 59 felony charges with no incarceration beyond time served stands in stark contrast to the alleged dangers to the nation that persuaded Judge James A. Parker to keep Lee in solitary confinement last December. The 1999 testimony by an FBI agent that Lee lied to a fellow employee about downloading computer files stands contradicted by that same agent's sworn admission last month that he had made an honest mistake in his prior testimony. The FBI director's statement this week that "some of the information . . . was not classified" undercuts prior testimony that Lee had jeopardized the "crown jewels" of the United States nuclear weapons program.

Criminal prosecution for mishandling classified information is rare, despite the fact that security rules are often violated. A former head of counterintelligence at the Energy Department said cases like Lee's were routinely handled by counseling the employee. Congress is justified in wanting to examine the decision to deploy all the artillery of the criminal process in this case.

At the same time, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is right to remind us that prior congressional pressure may well have precipitated the indictment. The circus of Hill hearings is probably not the best forum for examining the process. It would be far better for the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to prepare a public report.

Beyond the confines of this case, the Lee fiasco illustrates a deep-seated problem with our ability to administer justice in the face of incantations of "national security." Any counsel who has ever been involved in national security litigation recognizes that every legal rule changes in that context. Statutes that are otherwise unambiguous are stretched and distorted. Discretionary judgments become clouded. The specter of grave national injury hangs over the proceeding and distorts the process.

The dilemma is heightened by the presence of classified information, especially nuclear "secrets." Not only is the judiciary, as a general rule, inexperienced in dealing with national security issues, the government lawyers in the field who direct investigations, make prosecution decisions and conduct the trials have often never been exposed to classified materials. Government employees who spend their entire work life in a classified environment learn to distinguish "true threats" from rampant overclassification, but the neophyte cannot be expected to evaluate claims of grave injury.

It comes as no surprise to career intelligence personnel to read that while government witnesses claimed Lee endangered "crown jewels," a veteran Los Alamos weapons designer testified that the information "would not harm national security, even if it fell into the hands of a foreign power." That same official testified that "99 percent of the information was available in open scientific literature." An inexperienced individual asked to decide whose opinion was correct faces a hopeless task.

Those who have spent years in classified environments would immediately question the government's claims. If these data were indeed the crown jewels why were they classified at only the "Secret" level? By definition, information that could, if compromised, lead to grave national harm must be classified "Top Secret," and federal agencies are not known for underclassifying.

A judge who hears that these are "restricted data" available only to individuals with "Q clearances" will naturally reach the often false conclusion that this stuff must be important. Career officials know that those labels are automatically applied to information related to nuclear weapons and do not indicate extraordinary sensitivity.

More than 20 years ago, in another "nuclear secrets" litigation arising at Los Alamos, the Justice Department went to a federal judge claiming that vital nuclear weapons technology was at risk. In that case Justice sought--and obtained--an injunction against publication of an article on "How to Make an H-bomb." Despite the First Amendment and despite the Pentagon Papers decision, the court accepted the government's claims and suppressed the article.

But those claims of danger proved shallow when the Justice Department later learned that the same information had been placed on the public shelves of the Los Alamos Library, a fact not reported in the judicial decisions and thus not easily discovered by counsel or judges who want to know why the government consented to vacate the injunction.

Lee stands convicted of compromising nuclear secrets. But his plea does not clear up the cloud of concern that still hangs over this case. Nor should his bargained-for admission cause any of us to lose sight of the high risk to the rule of law that arises whenever the talismanic phrase "national security" is uttered. Yes, there are still actual threats to national security, and our law enforcement and counterintelligence communities must remain vigilant. But national security claims, like any others, need to be subject to the same rigorous standards of cross-examination and proof applied to ordinary issues.

The writer served in the Carter administration as the Justice Department's first counsel for intelligence policy.

---

In the Wake of Wen Ho Lee . . .

Washington Post
Sunday, September 17, 2000 ; B07
By Jeffrey H. Smith
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17740-2000Sep16.html

What is the nation to make of last week's events in the Wen Ho Lee case? As with Chou En-lai's observation about the significance of the French Revolution, "It's too early to tell." That's because espionage cases often involve our most important secrets, and the true story may never be known.

Espionage cases are probably the most difficult criminal cases to bring because in almost every one the government has additional information it does not wish to use in court. We do not know if that is the case here, but information has surfaced only recently that sheds new light on many of the most important espionage cases of the past.

For example, we now know that the government intercepted and decrypted KGB messages that proved the guilt of Julius Rosenberg, executed with his wife, Ethel, in 1953 for giving atomic secrets to the Soviets. But the United States did not use the intercepts in court in order to protect our phenomenal cryptanalytic success. Tragically, the intercepts also strongly suggested that Ethel was not guilty of crimes justifying her execution.

But some things are clear now: Lee's conduct is reprehensible. The government is right to insist that he explain why he downloaded nearly 400,000 pages of information relating to nuclear weapons, much of which is classified. In this regard, the attorney general was correct when she said that the plea agreement "is in the best interest of our national security, in that it gives us our best chance to find out what happened to the [missing] tapes." She concluded that protecting national security outweighs the interests of obtaining a conviction.

Yet her statement seemed like making a silk purse out of a sow's ear--an impression bolstered by the president's extraordinary observations in the Rose Garden that he had been deeply troubled by the case and by Lee's detention.

This case is far from over. Even if Lee tells the truth about the missing seven tapes, it is clear that the case will have a number of long-term consequences:

First, another National Lab scientist, Peter Lee, was convicted in 1997 of passing nuclear secrets to the Chinese. If Wen Ho Lee is not a Chinese spy, is a "third man" still spying for China? Or have the Chinese penetrated our computer or communications systems?

Second, a poisonous atmosphere among the government, contractors, security professionals and scientists reportedly permeates the labs. That must be fixed--and fast. Real security comes not from guards and fences, but from a genuine commitment by all employees to make security an integral part of the job.

Third, this case will make future espionage prosecutions much more difficult. In the past, courts have understandably given great deference to government officials. Affidavits by Cabinet-level officials attesting to the classified nature of the information are almost never challenged. Testimony by FBI agents, usually impossible to refute, is given credence. This case seriously challenges both of those propositions. In the future, judges will be much less inclined to believe assertions by federal officials in espionage cases.

Fourth, Congress and the Washington political class must understand that, when they fire up emotions about a foreign devil, they risk pressuring the law enforcement and intelligence authorities to move more rapidly than good trade craft and the Constitution allow. The Wen Ho Lee case occurred amid allegations of Chinese espionage and concerns about China's growing strategic position. Allegations about Chinese participation in the 1996 presidential campaign further fueled the fire. It is difficult for the Justice Department to segregate investigative and prosecutorial decisions from any political fury swirling in Washington.

Fifth, politicians and pundits must act responsibly as they criticize the Justice Department's handling of this case. Just as political pressure likely fueled, in some respect, the government's handling of the case, political excoriation of the Justice Department may make the government gun-shy in future espionage investigations.

Sixth, this case demonstrates once again the need for good working relationships between the law enforcement and intelligence communities.

Seventh, the best defense is a good offense--namely, a vigorous and successful penetration of a hostile government's intelligence service by the CIA. That's another reason why CIA Director George Tenet's emphasis on building a strong human intelligence capacity is absolutely vital.

This case presents perplexing problems. As we consider them, we must proceed thoughtfully; the national security and the Constitution demand it. But if we're having trouble understanding it, what in the world are they thinking in Beijing?

The writer is a Washington lawyer and former general counsel of the CIA.

---

The Prosecution of Wen Ho Lee

Washington Post
Sunday, September 17, 2000 ; B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17729-2000Sep16.html

So let me get this straight: The FBI interrogates a 60-year-old man, threatening him with, among other things, the suggestion that he could be electrocuted [news story, Jan. 8]. He's then dragged off to prison, where he is held in solitary confinement for nine months without bail.

And now the FBI is proud to say that it achieved its goal of securing the full cooperation of Mr. Lee [front page, Sept. 11]. This after he agreed to plead guilty to one charge out of 59, including 39 that carry life sentences.

Cooperation? All that was left was to drag out the whips and chains. This was a bungled investigation, influenced by a politically partisan administration.

IAN L. SITREN Santa Ana, Calif.

In all the commotion about security in our nuclear labs, there is a strange confusion about what the government has called the "crown jewels" of our nuclear weapons program--i.e., the allegedly stolen atomic secrets. The real crown jewels of our nuclear establishment are the scientists and engineers who maintain the health of our nuclear deterrence. And they have been demoralized by the attacks on their trustworthiness.

Atomic scientist Edward Teller, who knows something about secrecy and national security, has put it in a nutshell: "The criticism comes to a great extent from people who have quite a limited understanding of what really goes on in the labs in a scientific way. They're not only ignorant, they are not aware of the fact that they're ignorant."

MAURICE M. SHAPIRO Alexandria
The writer was a group leader in the wartime Los Alamos Laboratory.

-------- us nuc politics

Bush, Gore differ on global role
Democrat favors activism;
Republican is restrained

Columbus Dispatch
Sunday, September 17, 2000
Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/sep00/424142.html

WASHINGTON -- On several significant foreign-policy fronts, Al Gore and George W. Bush have world views as far apart as the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians embroiled in the never-ending Middle East peace talks.

If Democratic presidential nominee Gore ascends from vice president to commander in chief on Nov. 7, the AIDS epidemic in Africa and global warming will be high on the list of foreign-policy priorities.

To Gore, foreign policy is all about "forward engagement" into all parts of the globe, from regional conflicts in the Balkans and Ireland to genocide in Africa and "disruption of the world's ecological systems."

As defined by Gore in an April 30 speech in Boston, forward engagement is a strategy to employ American resources, including troops if needed, to address "problems early in their development before they become crises. . . . To meet these challenges requires cooperation on a scale not seen before. It demands that we confront threats before they spiral out of control."

If GOP nominee Bush vaults to the White House from the Texas governor's mansion, it will be a cold day in Haiti when U.S. troops are sent on humanitarian missions to countries not considered vital to America's national-security interests.

To Bush, foreign policy is about focusing on "enduring national interests," such as American ties with Europe and stable relations with Russia and China. Bush favored America's initial intervention in the Balkans but isn't enthusiastic about a sustained commitment there, and he wouldn't have sent troops into such places as Haiti, as did the Clinton-Gore administration.

"America must be involved in the world," Bush said last November in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. "But that does not mean our military is the answer to every difficult foreign-policy situation -- a substitute for strategy. American internationalism should not mean action without vision, activity without priority and missions without end -- an approach that squanders American will and drains American energy."

In essence, Gore attempts to paint himself as possessing the vision to lead a globally interdependent world needing help from the last superpower. Bush tries to portray himself as a hard-eyed realist willing to pursue a national missile-defense system with or without the consent of other countries and unwilling to play international cop.

But some foreign-policy experts don't see much evidence that a Gore or Bush administration would operate so differently abroad. They note that both candidates are internationalists at their core who stress the necessity of free trade with nearly all nations.

And it isn't clear just what Gore would do to take on such problems as AIDS and global warming that isn't already being done through foreign aid and other initiatives, said James Lindsay, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

For his part, Bush isn't going to pull U.S. troops out of the Korean Peninsula, Germany or the Mediterranean, Lindsay said. And removing U.S. forces from the Balkans or pursuing a unilateral missile-defense system would anger the European allies at the center of Bush's foreign-policy strategy, he noted.

"I don't think in the foreign-policy debate today we are really seeing fundamental differences," Lindsay said. "It's like two four-wheel-drive cars being packaged differently. There are some differences, but at the end of the day they are really just four-wheel-drive cars with combustion engines."

Senior advisers to Gore and Bush beg to differ.

"I think you will see a Bush administration considerably more focused around issues of national interest," said Condoleezza Rice, a principal foreign-policy adviser to Bush and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "There are some really significant differences."

Global warming and the AIDS epidemic are important. But those types of problems cannot be at the forefront of what shapes the U.S. foreign-policy agenda, Rice said. Bush would devote more effort than Gore to improving U.S. military readiness, working on trade relations, stabilizing conditions in Latin America and working on the "big relationships" with Russia and China, she said.

Foreign objections, whether from Russia or European allies, to an American missile-defense initiative stem largely from Clinton administration ineptitude, Rice charged. Key allies weren't consulted ahead of time and included in the system's planned protections. And Russian objections that such a system violates the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty could be overridden if the Russians could be convinced that an "entirely new strategic concept" aimed at preventing limited nuclear strikes could help them as much as the United States, she said.

"We have to convince the Russians that it is time to move beyond a doctrine that came from a time when the worry was a major Soviet bolt out of the blue in Europe," Rice said. "That world is gone."

But a senior foreign-policy adviser to Gore charged that a Bush administration would have an "unrealistically narrow" view.

Gore agrees that dealing with "classical engagement issues of war and peace" and the need for a "solid defense" are at the heart of any administration's foreign policy, said Bruce Jentleson, senior coordinator of foreign issues for the vice president's campaign and director of the Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University.

"But we also need to deal with new agenda issues . . . ethnic conflicts, the global environment," Jentleson said. "Our national interests are such that when ethnic cleansing is happening in the world we can't just look the other way."

Gore favors pursuing a missile-defense system, but that pursuit must examine whether the technology and cost justify endangering arms-control efforts and hampering relations with allies and foes alike, Jentleson said.

"The tendency on the Republican side is to make this a test of testosterone rather than technology," he said. "We need to be more sober and pragmatic than that."

Of course, neither Gore nor Bush actually spends much time on the campaign trail debating foreign policy.

It was barely mentioned in either man's nomination acceptance speech last month. Both have laid out basic principles in a few national-security and foreign-policy addresses over the past months, but not nearly in the same detail they have lavished on their health care and education proposals.

Why not? Polls show that since the Cold War, foreign policy and national security have been way down the list of issues that voters care about, said Randall Ripley, dean of the Ohio State University College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and a political science professor.

The election won't hinge on such issues as which missile-defense plan voters like more or whose policies on military expeditions find more favor, he said.

"The bottom line as I see it is neither candidate is talking very much about foreign policy and the public doesn't care, or at least cares reasonably little," Ripley said. Barring a major international crisis between now and Election Day, foreign policy will remain a "nonissue."

But Bush, Gore and their cadres of foreign-policy advisers would be loath to admit that international concerns are far down the list of campaign priorities. After all, either man could be making life-and-death decisions by next year.

And even if the rhetoric remains short on detail, it isn't hard to spot a distinct difference in outlook.

"I believe that now we have a profound responsibility to open the gates of opportunity for all the world's people so that they can become stakeholders in the kind of society we would like to build at large in the world and at home," Gore said on April 30 in Boston.

"Let me be clear: Promoting prosperity throughout the world is a crucial form of forward engagement."

"As president, I will order an immediate review of our overseas deployments -- in dozens of countries," Bush said last year in a speech at The Citadel military college in South Carolina.

"I will work hard to find political solutions that allow an orderly and timely withdrawal from places like Kosovo and Bosnia. We will encourage our allies to take a broader role. We will not be hasty. But we will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties."

-------------

The Museum of the American Century

Washington Post
Sunday, September 17, 2000
By Bob Thompson
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5693-2000Sep14.html

It hangs in the air above you, this impossibly fragile spruce and ash and wire and muslin contraption, like some rare butterfly facing immediate extinction, like a Soap Box Derby entry dwarfed by NASCAR behemoths, like a child's handmade box kite in the path of an ICBM.

Crane your neck a little higher and you can almost hear Charles Lindbergh revving the engine on the Spirit of St. Louis. Across the way, in the fire-tinted Glamorous Glennis-kaboom!-Chuck Yeager slams through the sound barrier one more time. And now, oh my God, better cover your ears: the Saturn V is shaking the foundations of the National Air and Space Museum as it gathers itself to rocket those three men in that battered metal canister over there-quick: can you name them?-toward their rendezvous with human destiny and the moon.

But hold the hallucinations and the pop quiz. Right now, we're supposed to be thinking about Where It All Began.

"One thing which I should probably point out," says aeronautics curator Peter Jakab as his lecture audience crowds around the Wright Flyer in the museum's Milestones of Flight gallery, "is that that is the actual first airplane to fly." Not a model, not a reproduction, but a shard of history itself. "The fabric covering that's on it looks rather new because it is fairly new. It was re-covered in 1985. But other than the fabric, what you see hanging there is what made the very first flights carrying the Wright brothers in 1903."

Jakab, an articulate and thoughtful historian with an attention-grabbing tie and a low-tech microphone with which he's not quite comfortable, goes on to sketch a portrait of the two odd ducks from Dayton, Ohio, who came up with this "stunning piece of mechanical and aeronautical engineering." If you had lived next door to Wilbur and Orville Wright in the 1880s, he says, when the brothers were coming of age, "you probably would have felt sorry for their parents. These were two guys who were kind of going nowhere fast."

You would have been wrong, of course.

In 1892, Will and Orv started a small bicycle rental and repair shop; before long they were turning out their own bikes as well. "All handcrafted originals," Jakab says. "One of the ironic things about the Wright brothers, who gave us one of the defining technologies of the 20th century, the airplane, is that they were very much 19th-century artisans in their approach to technology and design."

A few years later, they started messing around with flying machines. Their experience with two-wheelers served them well, as did their conceptual approach to problem-solving. They realized that, like a bicycle, an airplane could be "entirely unstable and entirely controllable" at the same time. Understanding this, they could focus less on built-in stability and more on sophisticated controls.

Like all great inventors, the Wrights weren't afraid to trust their own judgment. When they suspected that the lift calculations done by other aviation pioneers were wrong, for instance, they decided to collect their own data, which led them to develop what became the modern wind tunnel. Thus they not only invented the airplane, Jakab explains, but in many respects "they invented the practice of aeronautical engineering."

They did all this between 1899, when Wilbur wrote a letter to the Smithsonian requesting information on flying machines, and 1903, when their 605-pound creation lifted off from the windswept sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In those four years-as they conducted their research, traveled back and forth from Dayton to Kitty Hawk, bought components and contracted to have a few things made that they couldn't make on their own-"they spent only one thousand dollars."

So they made it on the cheap, this machine that changed our lives forever, and largely by themselves. Two guys on the shoreline of a new century, tinkering with space and time.

As Jakab talks, I can't help thinking of something one of his Air and Space colleagues, Tom Crouch, told me the other day. As the beginning of this new century approached, Crouch said, the good folks over at the Newseum in Arlington decided to release a list of what they claimed were the top 100 news stories of the past 100 years. The first four entries were:

"(1) United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki: Japan surrenders to end World War II. 1945.

"(2) American astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the moon. 1969.

"(3) Japan bombs Pearl Harbor: United States enters World War II. 1941.

"(4) Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first powered airplane. 1903."

Crouch promptly registered a complaint. You've got the order wrong as usual, he told the Newseum's director when they next ran into each other. Because the first three things on that list would never have even happened if it weren't for number four.

The Legend of the Lone Eagle

Crouch was just having fun, of course, but he's got a point. If you're looking to understand how the world got to be the way it is in the 21st century, the Wrights' flight is huge. And as a place to contemplate such cosmic questions, the National Air and Space Museum-this gargantuan temple to progress, technology, air power and human aspiration-is hard to beat.

Much of what we take for granted in the year 2000 can be seen in embryo here, from the globalization of the economy to the redefinition of war to the computerization of practically everything. (Memo to Bill Gates: If you want better press for your version of technological empire building, you might want to endow a National Museum of Cyberspace. Soon.)

Think the Cold War changed the world some? It's all over the building, mostly dressed up as the Space Race. Think big government-or "technocracy," as historian Walter McDougall likes to call it-is problematic? You've come to the right place to trace its roots.

There are limits to what you can see from an Air and Space perspective. History is too multifaceted to be viewed through a single frame. You won't find much here on medicine, for example, though medical advances have had perhaps the greatest impact on our day-to-day lives-simply by extending them-of any scientific work done this century. You can find a few traces of the civil rights revolution and of the radical change in the role of women, but you have to dig for them.

More problematic than these omissions is the distorting effect of Air and Space's celebratory mission, which clashes repeatedly with complex examinations of the past. The heavily politicized struggle over the 1995 Enola Gay exhibition is only the most notorious example. Want to know about the number one news story of the century? The B-29 itself is off display now, but you can find a short segment about it on the museum's $5 audio tour. The tape will tell you in considerable detail why the aircraft bears the deliberately misleading insignia of the 313th Bomber Group on its restored rear stabilizer. It offers not one syllable about why we dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or how the world changed as a result.

But let's skip over this little difficulty for now. It serves as a useful reminder that even the richest museums can't do all your work for you. The way you experience a historical artifact-and the National Air and Space Museum is jammed to the rafters with jaw-dropping historical artifacts-depends less on what the museum's label tells you than it does on the information, understanding and viewpoint you carry with you when you walk through the door.

So why not grab your historical perspective, whatever it happens to be, and join me for an Air and Space Tour of the American Century. We'll consider the life-altering implications of such things as the DC-3, the B-17 bomber, Wernher von Braun's slide rule, a barely visible smudge in the constellation Andromeda and the digitalized guidance system of the Minuteman missile. I'll call on expert help from the museum's curators along the way, though any mistakes I make will be mine, not theirs.

And please-feel free to argue back at any time.

We'll begin by peeling off from Peter Jakab's group and moving just a few yards farther into the museum, to our second stop. This would be the Spirit of St. Louis, the customized single-engined Ryan monoplane in which 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh flew 3,610 miles from New York to Paris in 331/2 hours in May 1927, kicking off a euphoric orgy of national pride and aviation worship that turned him into what biographer Scott Berg calls "the first modern media superstar."

If Orville and Wilbur Wright were 19th-century artisans at heart, Lindbergh, too, had his share of the old-time virtues Americans prized. He "appeared polite, modest, honest, and without moral faults," as historian Joseph Corn put it inThe Winged Gospel. Much was made of the Minnesota-bred pilot's descent from "pioneer stock"; he was compared to "Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and other individualists who, with knife and axe, wit and muscle, tamed a virgin land and built a civilization." His feat seemed to bridge the growing cultural gap between this kind of freelance heroics and the more impersonal triumphs of modern technology. The most important component of Lindbergh's image, as Corn and others have pointed out, was the fact that he conquered the Atlantic alone.

Which he did, of course, exhibiting remarkable skill and courage. Yet the true story of flight as it developed over the century-indeed, the story of all technology as it became progressively more expensive and sophisticated-has been one of increasingly collaborative effort, not of solo heroics. More and more, it came to involve the federal government, especially the armed forces. The legend of the "Lone Eagle" obscures a number of facts that foreshadowed this change.

Lindbergh's first solo flight took place in a $500 Army surplus biplane that he bought in 1923. He joined the Army Air Service so he could go to flight school. He honed his skills delivering the U.S. mail between St. Louis and Chicago. His New York to Paris flight was funded by a group of air-minded St. Louis businessmen, and his plane was manufactured by a small California company that would grow into a major aerospace contractor. On the museum's second floor is a monument to this collaboration: a small display case containing the Spirit's original spinner cap, complete with the signatures of the men from Ryan Aeronautical who built the plane.

Perhaps the most important decision Charles Lindbergh made was to trust his life to a plane with a single engine. He chose the Wright J-5 Whirlwind, a newly developed, exceptionally reliable air-cooled design that the Wright Company had recently decided to produce-after its arm was twisted by one of its biggest customers, the U.S. Navy.

The Bureaucrat Who Invented the Airline

Our next stop is Gallery 102, the Hall of Air Transportation. Don't be tempted by the gift shop as we walk by; you can get your National Air and Space Museum tank tops and your freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches and your "Star Wars" mouse pads on your way out. Ignore the ancient DC-7 on the ground over there, the one the crowd is lining up to walk through. No, you'll want to keep your eyes on that big aluminum underbelly overhead: the stogie-shaped tube with the straight wings and the twin propellers and "Fly Eastern Air Lines" lettered on the side.

It's a Douglas DC-3, circa 1937, otherwise known as the World's First Commercially Viable Airplane.

Brought to you by (drumroll, please) a visionary postmaster general of the United States.

"Ninety-nine percent of the population has no clue where the airline industry came from," says Bob van der Linden, the Air and Space curator responsible for commercial aviation. The prevailing myth, van der Linden explains, is that it was built by a clutch of trail-blazing entrepreneurs, "and there's some truth to that, but there's also a lot of fiction. Entrepreneurs don't go out there and raise money to build an industry unless there's money to be made. And there was no money to be made in commercial aviation until the federal government set up conditions that were conducive to it."

This was done mainly by the Post Office, which was looking for a faster way to move the mail. It created the U.S. Air Mail Service in 1918, using first Army pilots and then its own, mainly flying single-engine biplanes. It started transcontinental service and created a system of lighted airways, in conjunction with the Commerce Department, to permit night flying. In 1925, with the routes well established, it started shifting mail delivery to contract airmail carriers. "Which is another name for an airline," van der Linden says.

It still wasn't profitable to fly passengers, but by the early 1930s, Postmaster General Walter Brown was working on that, too. He wanted the airlines to make money so he wouldn't have to subsidize airmail delivery. Brown "was not the most agreeable person," van der Linden says, "but man, he knew what he was doing." By revamping the airmail contracts-he lowered the rate of payment while encouraging the carriers to expand the system-he doubled the air routes at no extra cost. He also "cajoled the airlines into acquiring better equipment" by offering subsidies "for flying larger aircraft, safer aircraft, with multiple engines, two-way radios, for being able to fly at night." Impatient with the rate of progress, Brown "brought all the airline operators together here, in the old Post Office Building, fifth floor, and read them the riot act" about getting new planes.

The result? "Passenger service increased from about 6,000 people in 1930 to about 450,000 people in 1934." And bigger, faster, safer airplanes-like the one we're looking at now-got built.

The DC-3 was the first passenger aircraft capable of turning a profit without carrying mail. "It's just hugely important," van der Linden says. "It was ubiquitous. It was everywhere." It's also startling, when you stop to think about it, how much this pinnacle of 1930s design looks and feels like a modern airplane. "Obviously the technology, particularly in the engines and aerodynamics, has changed drastically. But we still make an airplane out of aluminum and we rivet it together. It's still a tube, and the fuselage sits on top of the wings."

Even an engineering triumph like the DC-3, however, was a transportation option primarily for the well-to-do. Airplanes cut the coast-to-coast travel time from three or four days to one, but fares were still too high for most Americans to afford except on rare occasions. It took the introduction of the jet engine to commercial aviation in the 1950s-and the vastly more efficient airliners that resulted-to really shrink the globe for the middle class.

We take it so entirely for granted now, the idea of being able to get anywhere on the planet in less than a day, that it's hard even to list the changes the transportation revolution produced. Air and Space curators tend to laugh when you ask them to do this. Then they start talking about the homogenization of the country and the world, the breakdown of geographically based community, the multinationalization of commerce and industry, and, of course, the tragic removal of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants to Los Angeles and San Francisco. (This actually happened a year before domestic jet service, van der Linden points out, but basing teams thousands of miles from their opponents was possible only because "airlines had finally developed long-range piston aircraft that could fly nonstop.")

The British and the Soviets developed the first passenger jets, but these had too many bugs to succeed. Thus the commercial jet age truly began, van der Linden argues, with the Boeing 367-80, a one-of-a-kind experimental aircraft that first flew in 1954. The museum owns the Dash 80, as it is affectionately known, but we can't see it on this tour; there won't be room for anything that big until an additional Air and Space facility near Dulles International Airport gets built. Groundbreaking is scheduled for next month, though the money hasn't all been raised yet; the opening is projected for the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' flight.

If you happen to be in Seattle, however, and can talk your way into Boeing's old Plant 2, where the Dash 80 is being restored, you can walk through this immediate precursor of the Boeing 707-the airplane, van der Linden says, that "really, truly introduced jet travel, certainly to the United States and, practically speaking, around the world."

You'll see that it looks a lot like the jets we fly on today, though its brown and yellow paint job has faded, its instrument panel is not computerized, and the foam rubber cushion on the copilot's seat is held in place by duct tape.

You'll also learn that it wasn't initially designed as a commercial airliner.

Boeing, in the early '50s, was still primarily a builder of military aircraft, including the B-47s and B-52s of the Strategic Air Command. To complete their mission, which was to deliver nuclear devices to the enemy's homeland in case of war, these jet-powered bombers had to be refueled in the air. But there were no jet-powered tankers to do this.

It seemed only logical to fill this need. If civilian demand followed-as it soon did, when Pan Am started shopping for a passenger jet-so much the better. Then Boeing's gamble would really pay off.

Four Hours Over Tokyo

"Ba-ba! Ba-ba-ba! Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!" The boy looks to be about 10 years old. He leans over the second-floor railing above the Air Transportation gallery, both hands cocked, and sprays the crowd below him with imaginary gunfire. His mother finally drags him off, but not before he's underlined an essential connection. The history of flight is inextricably bound up with the reinvention of war.

We've had glimpses of this all along, but it's time to confront the linkage directly. So let's head for the World War II gallery and gather in the doorway. We can admire the enormous Boeing B-17 that Keith Ferris has painted on the back wall-"Fortress Under Fire," the mural is called-while we bring the military narrative up to date.

In the earliest days of aviation, the airplane's potential for good or evil was often seen as an all-or-nothing proposition. Optimists thought the new technology might end war forever, either by breaking down international borders to promote understanding or by proving such a fearful weapon that no sane nation would risk its use. Pessimists, who doubted that sanity would prevail, predicted airborne apocalypse.

World War I proved an inadequate testing ground for these hypotheses. Military aviation was too new a concept, the airplane itself was too primitive, and the unprecedented horrors of trench warfare overshadowed everything else. Still, the war made it clear to many that air power-in one form or other-was going to be the next big thing.

Which is where the B-17 comes in.

The Ferris mural features one of the famed four-engined "Flying Fortresses" in the air near Wiesbaden, Germany, in August of 1944. Along with three other bombers flying in formation below, it is under attack by Nazi fighters and antiaircraft batteries. You can see the deadly black puffs of flak against the blue summer sky, and you can imagine the courage it took for the B-17's 10 crewmen to fly through it, without fighter escorts and hundreds of miles from their base, long enough to unload their bombs and hightail it for home-then turn right around and do it again.

What you may not be able to imagine, because the B-17s have become such a potent symbol of the American contribution to Hitler's defeat, is how close we came to not building them at all.

In the 1930s, when funds for all things military were scarce, there was a fierce struggle between advocates of long-range "strategic" bombers like the B-17 and cheaper, shorter-range aircraft that many deemed adequate for our needs. The B-17 program was nearly scuttled when pilot error caused a prototype to crash in an early test. Bitter Army-Navy rivalries, plus the regular Army's suspicion of the upstart Army Air Corps, nearly wrecked it as well. Only the dramatic intervention of President Franklin Roosevelt-who saw what the mere threat of German air power had accomplished at Munich in 1938-got the production lines geared up in time.

All this adds up to a heroic story line, with farsighted leaders and brave airmen teaming up to help defeat the evil Nazis and the brutal militarists of Japan. We don't call World War II "the last good war" for nothing. And yet . . . Let's look once more at that Keith Ferris mural. Anybody notice what's missing?

Yes, of course.

There's not a hint of what happens once the bombs are released.

The history of strategic bombing in World War II is complex and deeply contentious, so it's important to make a couple of things clear in advance. There is no need to point fingers or assign blame in order to grasp the magnitude of the change it represents. Nor is it required that you question the overall justness of the Allied cause.

A few definitions may also be helpful. The "tactical" use of air power involves supporting traditional military operations on land or sea. It was crucial to victory in World War II (more so than strategic bombing, perhaps, though we don't have time get into that debate here). Air power's "strategic" use, by contrast, implies an assault on the enemy's fundamental ability to wage war. It seeks to smash the infrastructure that supports armies and to destroy a nation's will to fight.

Strategic bombing can be divided further into "precision" bombing, which means targeting, say, factories and railroads, and "area" bombing, which means going straight at population centers. These distinctions are always cleaner in theory than in practice. But it was the emergence of area bombing-this newfound ability to obliterate whole cities and the people in them-that truly changed the nature of war.

One of the most shocking things about this transformation was the suddenness with which it took place. There had been attempts at strategic bombing by both sides in World War I, but the technology really wasn't there yet. There were scattered outbreaks of area bombing in the 1930s-by the pro-Franco forces in Spain, the Italians in Ethiopia and the Japanese in China-but these were loudly abhorred as uncivilized aberrations.

In 1937, the State Department denounced the Japanese bombing of Chinese cities as "contrary to principles of law and of humanity." In 1938, including the Spanish bombing in its condemnation this time, it called such behavior "barbarous." In 1939, after war broke out in Europe, President Roosevelt issued a plea for the belligerents to exercise restraint. "The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population," he wrote, "has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity."

Fast-forward 51/2 years. Germany's major effort at area bombing, the famed London blitz, has proved nightmarish but ultimately ineffective. The surprise Japanese tactical air strike on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor (remember Top News Story No. 3) has brought the United States into the war. An Allied bombing campaign of increasing ferocity and dubious precision has ravaged Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin and many other German cities. And on the night of March 9, 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces have unleashed the B-17's successor, the B-29, to firebomb Tokyo from low altitudes-killing some 88,000 people and wounding 41,000 more, according to a very rough American estimate, in a single four-hour raid.

In those four hours, one Air Force general will later assert, there were "more casualties than in any other military action in the history of the world." They were mostly civilians, of course.

The night was unusually windy, and after less than half an hour of the incendiary bombardment, writes historian Ronald Schaffer in Wings of Judgment, Tokyo residents saw the initial conflagrations "coalesce into a mass of fire . . . By now crowds of people, some of them screaming, were plunging through the city. The fire storm quickly roasted those who stayed in under-house shelters . . . superheated air burned their lungs . . . Residents hurried from burning areas with possessions bundled on their backs, unaware that the bundles had ignited. Some women who carried infants this way realized only when they stopped to rest that their babies were on fire."

We don't think that much about the Tokyo bombing anymore. The spotlight of history is trained on what came next. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not so clear a break from the past as a blue-sky mural can make them seem.

Athens 1, Sparta 0

"Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins," the fast-talking docent in the blue blazer is saying. And there it is at last: the answer to our moon-landing pop quiz.

We're back in the Milestones gallery again, and the docent is standing in front of our next stop, the Apollo 11 command module, addressing a crowd of maybe 30 folks wearing ball caps that say "Korean War Veteran" and assorted New York Yankees gear. He says they're looking at "the good ship Columbia"-the astronauts got to name it themselves-which was hurled into space on July 16, 1969, by a three-stage Saturn V rocket he calls "the most successful large-scale object ever built by human beings." He tells them how, once Columbia was in lunar orbit, Armstrong and Aldrin squeezed into the landing module Eagle and headed down to take that first giant step for mankind. He notes that for the 20 hours they were gone, Mike Collins-the member of the trio you're most likely to have forgotten-was left to circle the moon alone.

It's an awe-inspiring story, no matter how many times you've heard it. It's also the story the National Air and Space Museum is best-equipped to tell. A few years back, however, as the curators were getting ready to redo the Space Hall exhibit, they realized they had a significant problem on their hands.

Everyone knew that men had landed on the moon. Hardly anyone understood why.

"Going to the moon didn't just happen in 1969 because it was time to go to the moon," explains space history curator Valerie Neal. But the artifacts couldn't fill in the narrative by themselves. "We had a variety of objects that really weren't talking to each other and just a sense of intellectual clutter down there . . . We had the lander within view of military rockets and there was no connection made between those at all."

"We wanted to get people to understand," says Neal's colleague Martin Collins (no relation to the Apollo astronaut), "that this was a historical process that came out of a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. And that that particular confrontation gave shape to just about everything you see in that gallery."

To those of us who lived through that four-decade face-off, the frame of reference should at least be familiar (though we tend to be weak on details). But to the increasing number of museum visitors who weren't out of diapers when the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War might as well be the Peloponnesian War. Tell us again, Daddy: How did Athens and Sparta end up sending people into space?

Here's how:

Immediately after World War II, as a section of the revised exhibit called "Military Origins of the Cold War" explains, the Americans and the Soviets started eyeing each other nervously. The Americans had the atomic bomb and the long-range bombers to deliver it. The Soviets had neither, but that situation didn't last. And long before they even got the bomb, they'd decided that intercontinental ballistic missile systems, not airplanes, were the best way to deliver it.

Both sides made good use of captured German rocket technology, but by the early '50s, the Soviets had pulled ahead. The Air Force still wasn't buying the ICBM argument-there were doubts that missile guidance systems would ever work well enough, and besides, who needs 'em? We've got B-52s! In the meantime, however, nuclear weapons were getting so much lighter and more powerful that you didn't need such accurate guidance anymore: Five miles from the target would do just fine. And then along came President Eisenhower-who feared the social and economic consequences of an oversized military establishment-with a plan to cut back conventional forces and build up a nuclear deterrent instead.

"More bang for the buck," some clever phrase-maker dubbed Ike's idea, and by 1954, American ICBM development had taken off. The opening shot of the space race was still three years away, but on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the essential groundwork was laid.

We can't say that the Cold War arms race made the space race happen-historical causality is a slippery customer, and there were too many other things that contributed as well. But we're on pretty safe ground if we call it a necessary precondition. "There's no conceivable way in the 20th century that we would have gone to the moon without that military investment," is the way space history curator Michael Neufeld puts it.

"You don't get a human inside a spacecraft," says Neal, "until you've researched reentry vehicles. And the reentry vehicles that were being researched were warheads."

The Space Race gallery is closed for window repairs, unfortunately, but you can find a quite satisfying version on the museum's Web site (www.nasm.si.edu). There you'll be reminded how the Soviets stunned the planet on October 4, 1957, by launching Sputnik I, the first-ever artificial satellite, into orbit. The ability to deliver nuclear weapons was an obvious and threatening subtext. (A model of Sputnik hangs in the Milestones gallery; it looks like an anodized basketball with rabbit ears.)

You'll see how we responded by setting up NASA as a civilian space agency-the idea was to contrast American openness with Soviet secrecy-and at the same time developing the top-secret Corona spy satellite program, which we needed to see how far behind we really were when it came to ICBMs. You'll recall that President Kennedy (who got himself elected, in part, by hyping a "missile gap" Corona's photographs would prove never existed) decided in 1961 to counter a string of Soviet space achievements with a crash program to send Americans to the moon. And you'll marvel, as Valerie Neal does, that we got there in just "the span of one human lifetime" after the Wright brothers flew.

One of Apollo's great legacies, Neal says, was "the single image of Earth as seen from lunar distance"-the ability to view the planet, suspended in galactic darkness, looking lovelier and more fragile than we'd ever seen it before.

The Big Bang and the Primordial Fireball

To understand how the 20th century totally altered our point of view, however, we need to get a long way past the moon. So our next stop had better be the Einstein Planetarium, where historian of astronomy David DeVorkin is holding forth about the night sky.

"Now let's really move out deep," DeVorkin says as he shifts his pointer toward the top of the artificially starry dome. "This is the constellation of Andromeda, and within that constellation is the furthest thing we can see with our unaided eyes." He's talking about that tiny smudge of light over there. "It's at a distance of over 2 million light years. That means light traveling at 186,000 miles a second takes 2 million years to get to us from that little patch of light."

But that's not what's special about it, as he later explains.

Nope. That particular smudge of light in Andromeda is the reason "we lost any hope of having a central position in the cosmos."

All this is Edwin Hubble's doing, which is why NASA named a space telescope after him. In 1924 Hubble was a young astronomer on the staff of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, scanning the known universe with what was then the largest telescope in the world. Space was a much smaller place back then, DeVorkin says. "At the beginning of the century, galaxies didn't exist. We were in a universe of stars." To be sure, Copernicus and Galileo had long since proved that everything didn't revolve around us, that we were just tiny creatures on a planet circling the sun. "But the general idea was that the sun was, if not at the center, pretty close to the center of this huge pinwheel of stars."

Observing that smudge in Andromeda-it was known as a "spiral nebula," and the sky was full of them, but nobody knew what they were-Hubble discovered that it contained something called a cepheid variable. This is a type of star that "dims and brightens in a predictable cycle" (as the draft script for a new astronomy gallery DeVorkin has been helping put together describes it). For reasons too complicated for a liberal arts type to explain, astronomers knew how to use cepheids as a kind of "cosmic yardstick" to measure distance in space.

Anyway, when Hubble found that cepheid in the Andromeda nebula, he was able to calculate the nebula's distance-and he discovered that it was way, way too far off to be part of the cluster of familiar stars we call the Milky Way. It was nothing less than a separate galaxy, with billions and billions of stars of its own-and so were all those other spiral nebulae out there.

So at the same time the airplane was radically shrinking the globe, astronomy was expanding the universe in literally unimaginable ways. "The scale of it is beyond human comprehension," DeVorkin says.

But wait-it gets worse. Because the scale wasn't the only thing about the universe that changed.

Five years after Hubble had convinced his fellow astronomers that galaxies exist, DeVorkin says, "he convinced the scientific community that they're all moving away from one another-that the universe is not static. He wasn't the first one to see that, but he was the first one to realize what it meant consistently on a global scale . . . He was the right guy at the right time, with the biggest telescope in the world."

In five years, then, we went from a static universe made up of individual stars to a rapidly and infinitely expanding universe made up of an unknowable number of galaxies. "And then out of that, primarily out of theory, theoretical considerations, came the Big Bang and the primordial fireball, if you want to call it: some kind of process when time didn't mean what it means today." Nobody will ever know exactly when the Bang banged or the fireball fired up, for the simple reason that "time didn't exist when it happened, whatever it was that happened." But never mind. Just about everybody believes that something did.

"That's the master narrative," DeVorkin sums up cheerfully, "and what we've been doing, for the better part of the 20th century since then, is filling that master narrative in."

Got that?

Good.

Let's move on.

'That's Not My Department,' Says Wernher von Braun

But where should we move on to, in a museum whose own master narrative-however compelling-has not been filled in enough to explain the historical moment in which we find ourselves?

Air and Space hymns the march of technology and progress, the irresistible force of American arms, the triumph of human ingenuity and will. This should come as no surprise, given its mandate to "memorialize the development of air and space flight." Yet with only a modest shift in perspective, a visitor can conjure the ghosts of more ambiguous story lines.

Take, for example, the coming of the atomic age. To consider this one, we might want to assemble near the locked door of Gallery 103, behind which still rest the various components of the Enola Gay that finally made it onto display in 1995, in a radically downsized exhibition stripped of meaningful context.

The original exhibition script, you may recall-which had invited museum visitors to consider both the necessity and the consequences of the 1945 atomic bombings-was withdrawn after a vehement attack by the Air Force Association sparked a widespread public outcry. Talk about different perspectives: The opposing sides in the Enola Gay brawl barely spoke the same language. Defenders of the planned exhibition cited the opinions of people like conservative press baron Henry Luce, who argued in 1948 that the war could have been ended "without the bomb explosion that so jarred the Christian conscience." Yet to a group of congressional critics, no consciences could possibly have been jarred, because the Hiroshima bombing was "one of the most morally unambiguous events of the 20th century."

Or take our painful discovery that American power has limits. For this, we'll need to move upstairs to the Sea-Air Operations gallery and stand in front of the Douglas A-4C Skyhawk, one of the few reminders in the whole museum that there even was a war in Vietnam.

Peter Jakab once tried to remedy this situation. "I spent about four years developing an exhibition gallery," Jakab says. "The organizing principle was the notion of multiple perspectives and how that can shape alternate points of view of history." Visitors were to walk down a C-130 transport ramp into a detailed evocation of air power's numerous applications in Vietnam. They were also to explore the ways five American perspectives on the war-those of political leaders, military leaders, the media, the civilian population and individual soldiers-evolved from the early to the late stages. But after the Enola Gay blew up, then-Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman said uh-uh, no more controversial topics right now, please.

But perhaps the most significant story Air and Space fails to confront directly, though it jumps out at you from just about every gallery if you're looking for it, is the post-World War II entrenchment of Big Government.

Ask an Air and Space curator to name the major historical themes the museum's collections evoke, and there's a good chance he or she will start by talking about how, over the last six decades or so, the federal government took on the central role in "the marshaling of technical, human, economic and industrial resources toward common goals," or how it required government intervention to "muster large amounts of treasure and people and skills to build these technologies." Curators point to the "massive, large-scale logistical and organizational effort" that it took to win World War II, and to the lesson both government and industry drew from its success: that if you threw money, will, technology and the best and brightest scientists at a problem-as we did, say, with the Manhattan Project-you could do anything.

There are a lot of different tag lines for the social and political restructuring that resulted. "Big government" is the simplest, if the least precise. President Eisenhower called it "the military-industrial complex," warning that public policy could easily "become the captive of a scientific-technical elite." Air and Space curators tend to shy away from Ike's term-it's too politicized now, and it also leaves out universities, a key component in the mix-so they substitute phrases like "the contract state" instead. Walter McDougall's Pulitzer-winning history of the space age, The Heavens and the Earth, calls it "technocracy."

"Ours is an age of perpetual technological revolution," McDougall writes. While it's true that government played a role in boosting 19th-century technologies, it was the 20th century's all-encompassing brand of warfare that "finally established state-sponsored and -directed R&D as a public duty and necessity. Rapid development of new weaponry, ersatz strategic materials, and more productive manufacturing processes became an imperative of national survival in total war."

McDougall is not sanguine about this development. He sees Sputnik, which sparked a "media riot" over America's alleged scientific backwardness, as the point where Eisenhower's rearguard battle against technocratic excess was lost. Apres Ike le deluge: His successors promptly succumbed to "the technocratic temptation," and a "strange alliance between the social activists and the military activists" produced a barrage of expensive domestic programs; a vastly accelerated nuclear arms race (with the space race serving as a kind of protective coloration); and, of course, the technocratic hubris of Vietnam.

There are good reasons, even beyond the obvious political ones, why Air and Space lacks a Hall of Technocracy. The concept is too abstract and sprawling to get across cleanly (you'd need miles of wall labels). And if you tried to tell the story through a central figure-that time-honored trick used by feature writers and museum curators to make complex issues more digestible-you'd distort reality by making your chosen subject seem too important. We're talking about a quintessentially collective phenomenon, after all.

But what the heck. Let's give it a whirl.

Over in the Space Race gallery, dwarfed by the displays of missiles and NASA hardware that dominate the room, is a ruler-shaped object that you might not even recognize if you're under the age of 25 or so. It's a slide rule that belonged to Wernher von Braun. As much as any other individual, von Braun was responsible for getting Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to the moon. A tireless evangelist for American space exploration, he led the NASA team that developed the Saturn V, and as curator Neal explains, he exemplified "the kind of engineer-manager mastermind behind this technology development" who "interfaced with the political environment to nurture it along."

Von Braun's skill in managing technology projects, however, was acquired in Germany, where the army missile he helped nurture was the V-2 and the political environment with which he interfaced was the Third Reich. To look back at his astonishing career is to grasp both the triumphs and the terrors of the 20th-century technocratic enterprise.

As a teenager from an aristocratic Prussian family, von Braun become obsessed with the idea of space travel. But he quickly realized, as Michael Neufeld writes in The Rocket and the Reich, that "the daunting task of building a complicated liquid-fueled, gyroscopically guided missile" could be accomplished only with military funding. So he signed on to work with the Army Ordnance Office in 1932, a year before the Nazis came to power. Von Braun and his fellow enthusiasts saw no problem with this. "Our feelings toward the army," as he later put it, "resembled those of the early aviation pioneers, who, in most countries, tried to milk the military purse for their own ends and who felt little moral scruples as to the possible future use of their brainchild."

Five years later, he was technical director of the Peenemunde Experimental Center, a lavishly funded and staffed new test facility where-with some help from university labs and corporations-German rocketeers worked to perfect what the army hoped would be a decisive new weapon. Von Braun proved himself a brilliant engineering manager, though the V-2 itself turned out to be a strategic mistake for the Nazis. Vast quantities of scarce resources were diverted to produce a missile that killed between 5,000 and 6,000 people, mostly civilians in Belgium and England, but had no significant effect on the course of the war. Many more people died building it than from its use; the notorious V-2 assembly plant at Nordhausen relied on slave labor from concentration camps.

But the V-2's potential was clear, and even before the Germans surrendered, the Allies were racing to snatch up the engineers who'd built it. Von Braun and the bulk of Peenemunde's rocket team fell into the hands of the U.S. Army, which shipped them back to the States and put them to work making missiles for us. The rest is history: the kind of history to which the phrase "Faustian bargain" is frequently attached, and which inspired a Tom Lehrer tune that the older among us may recall:

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Unfair? You be the judge. "The same thing would have happened at Peenemunde without me," von Braun told Daniel Lang of the New Yorker in 1951, nine years before he and his team moved from the Army to NASA. "Rockets were a new idea, and a new idea is stronger than one man's feelings." Most likely he's right. The airplane, too, would almost certainly have been invented by someone even if the Wrights had stuck to bicycle design.

Yet it's hard to overestimate the significance of the rocket team's technocratic brainchild, a carefully restored example of which you can examine in the Space Race gallery when it reopens. Like its American counterpart, the Manhattan Project, Peenemunde was a prototypical military-industrial-scientific effort that gave birth to a miracle of technology. When the two miracles were mated, well . . .

"Technology offers millions a chance to investigate the higher aspects of life," von Braun told Lang. "But you don't get something for nothing. There are strings attached to that chance."

Space and Cyberspace

It all seems so long ago now, doesn't it? Sputnik. Apollo. The Cold War.

Technocracy's still with us, of course, and we're still spending billions on missiles. Life's a giant game of Space Invaders, we're told, and we'll be toast if we can't knock rogue rockets out of the sky.

But who pays attention to this?

Air travel is mundane. Space flight is history. The Saturn rocket program was canceled even before we reached the moon. Von Braun's masterpiece was so enormous, expensive and slow to launch that it had no practical military application.

Meanwhile, the National Air and Space Museum itself is starting to feel just a little out of touch, like one of those musty dioramas of Life in Prehistoric Times. (Look, Ma, there's a Saber-Toothed Flying Tiger and an X-20 Dyna Soar!) We're a fickle species with a famously short attention span-and it's cyberspace that fires our imagination these days.

Time for one last stop, then.

Let's head up to the Beyond the Limits gallery, where aeronautics meets the computer age. A few yards from the entrance, we'll find a plexiglass-covered cylinder, perhaps four feet in diameter. It's the guidance system from a Minuteman missile with its electronic innards exposed. (Memo to Bill Gates, Part II: On second thought, you should be supporting this museum. Because without the Minuteman guidance system, you might be working for IBM.)

"People think Bill Gates invented it, you know?" Paul Ceruzzi is saying. Ceruzzi is an Air and Space curator and the author of A History of Modern Computing-he's the guy who put the guidance system on display-and by "it" he means the key technology behind the computer revolution. He's talking about the primal Silicon Valley creation myth, in which this life-enhancing technology springs fully grown from the foreheads of heroic nerds with names like Gates, Jobs and Wozniak, all working out of tiny West Coast garages without a trace of help from the hopelessly anti-entrepreneurial federal government.

Well . . .

Bear with me. Some actual history is essential here.

The Minuteman is a three-stage solid-fuel missile that became America's standard ICBM in the 1960s. It got its name from the fact that-unlike a liquid-fuel rocket-it could be fired almost instantly, at a target determined in advance.

The first Minutemen were deployed in 1962, but already a shift in American nuclear strategy was forcing the Air Force to think about a new, improved version-one with enough computing power in its guidance system so you could change its target immediately before launch. The trick was to do this without adding weight, because more weight would make the missile too expensive even by Defense Department standards.

Around this time, Ceruzzi says, a couple of guys named Jack Kirby (at Texas Instruments) and Robert Noyce (at Fairchild Semiconductor) were just coming up with something called an "integrated circuit." Forget all those transistors and resistors and whatnot that had to be manufactured separately and wired together on a circuit board. Now the whole thing could go on a single silicon wafer! Manufacturing was going to be hell, though. The assembly line would have to be preternaturally clean (a single speck of dust would ruin everything), and there were numerous other problems to be solved before silicon chips would be cheap enough to find a market.

The only way a company could make chips profitable "was to have a huge production line churning these things out by the millions," Ceruzzi explains. In the boom-and-bust electronics market of the '60s and '70s, however, "nobody was going to invest in that kind of a production line, because they had been burned so many times with unsold product. They just said, `No way, it's too risky.' " But then "along comes the Air Force, and says, `If you make them, we'll buy them.' And they say, `Okay, we'll build a production line.' Once you build the production line, you can just churn the stuff out, which is what they do."

Pretty soon, NASA began ordering integrated circuits for the Apollo program. Between the Minuteman and the moon shot, the government was buying just about every chip manufactured. By 1964, as my Washington Post colleague T.R. Reid wrote in The Chip, his book on the digital revolution, "the initial manufacturing base was in place, and the integrated circuit started flying down the learning curve with the speed of a lunar rocket in reentry."

But what if the government hadn't come along and created a market for this new technology? What if it hadn't demanded a more flexible bang for its bucks? Would that mean no $10 calculators? No Sony Walkmen? No VCRs? No home computers?

Ceruzzi isn't sure he wants to go that far. Counter-factual arguments are impossible to prove. Chips are such great technology, he says, that it's entirely possible they would have broken through without the government boost-though almost certainly at a more modest pace. And yet . . .

They might not have, either.

"You have to always be very cautious, as a historian, to say that there's an inevitability to history," he says. "It just doesn't happen that way." Without the government boost, what looks to us in hindsight like the obvious technical superiority of the chip might not have been good enough. "Just like the Betamax VCR was not good enough, or the Macintosh was not good enough, to prevail in the marketplace."

No one will ever know.

As Ceruzzi talks on, I can't help expanding the question to include all the stops on the Air and Space tour. What would our lives be like today without the invention Orville Wright once compared to the discovery of fire? Without DC-3s and 707s; without B-17s and the Enola Gay; without shifting galaxies and permanent technocracies; without the programmable death machine we're standing in front of right now?

No cyberspace? No silicon chips?

Paul Ceruzzi's got an answer to that one, at least.

"Somebody could have come up with something better!" he says.

Bob Thompson is a staff writer for the Magazine. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article at 1 p.m. Monday on www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline.

-------- MILITARY (by country)

Western Leaders Face Trial in Belgrade Monday: Spectators sit behind empty chairs reserved for President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the start of the trial in Belgrade.

Fox News
Monday, September 18, 2000
http://www.foxnews.com/world/091800/yugoslavia.sml

It looks like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair won't be taking a moonlit cruise on the Danube anytime soon: Both are facing an angry judge at a trial in Yugoslavia for war crimes they allegedly committed during NATO's air strikes last year.

The alleged crimes have cast a wide net, ensnaring Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder - a total of 14 leaders of the Western world.

But unlike the protracted legal battles Clinton has faced in the U.S., Yugoslavian justice was moving quickly to condemn and convict.

The trial is already under way and is expected to wrap up by Sept. 24, the day of Yugoslavia's presidential and parliamentary elections, in which President Slobodan Milosevic - who was indicted for war crimes in Kosovo by the United Nations in May - is seeking a second term.

It took three hours Monday for District Public Prosecutor Andrija Milutinovic and his deputy to read the list of charges of war crimes the defendants allegedly committed during the March-to-June bombing.

"They are charged with inciting an aggressive war ... war crimes against civilian population ... use of banned combat means, attempted murder of the Yugoslav president ... the violation of the country's territorial integrity," the charges sheet said.

Mr. President, You'll Get a Fair Trial

To ensure the accused receive fair trials, the government has appointed an attorney for each defendant. But with none of their clients present to assist in their own defense, the attorneys face an uphill battle. The mounds of documents introduced as evidence make the Starr Report look like a pamphlet.

Presiding Judge Veroljub Raketic said there was six times as much material available elsewhere, and prosecutors said it would take four days to present all the evidence.

The accused face sentences of up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. Justice Minister Dragoljub Jankovic said that based on the evidence, he expected maximum sentences to be meted out.

"The question is how the sentence will be carried out. As the international community's stand on our country is changing, I believe some of them will one day be extradited," Jankovic said, according to the independent Beta news agency.

According to the charge sheet, the accused "fired 600 cruise missiles and made 25,119 (air) sorties during the 78-day aggression, attacking both military and civilian targets, killing and wounding many people, causing mass destruction of property."

The prosecutor read out the names of 503 civilians, 240 soldiers and 147 police who he said were killed during the bombing, which NATO launched to halt Belgrade's violent attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

Court officials also read out statements made by the accused Western leaders that prosecutors said support the charge that they were inciting war. Films of NATO attacks on Yugoslav targets were shown as the officials read out survivors' testimonies and forensic reports.

Regardless of whether the testimony will lead to Clinton or the 13 other western political leaders doing time in a Serb jail, the accounts nonetheless served as a poignant and tragic reminder of the horrors that have ravaged the former Yugoslavia.

These testimonies included a mother whose daughter was killed in the Montenegrin village of Murino where she had been sent for safety, and a rescuer relaying how a girl in flames died in his arms as he took her out of a wrecked train.

NATO insisted throughout the campaign that it was aiming only at military targets and took all possible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. However, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said in February that 500 civilians had been killed by the air strikes.

NATO has acknowledged that the Humans Rights Watch report contained legitimate criticism but maintains that NATO's actions could not be compared with the Serb violence in Kosovo.

-------- drug war

U.N. Forsakes Effort to Curb Poppy Growth By Afghans

New York Times
September 17, 2000
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/world/17AFGH.html

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 15 - Frustrated by declining support from Western donors and the indifference of the ruling Taliban, the United Nations is winding down efforts to persuade farmers in Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium, to switch to alternative legal crops.

Ghorak, Khakrez and Maiwand, three districts of Qandahar province where the United Nations set up pilot programs promoting alternative crops, have recorded decreases in poppy cultivation of at least 50 percent, according to the latest annual survey of the United Nations International Drug Control Program.

"This demonstrates that the alternative development projects work very well," the program's executive director, Under Secretary General Pino Arlacchi, said here. Similar programs in Bolivia and Peru, he noted, led to sharp declines there in the cultivation of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

But despite United Nations efforts to convince Afghan farmers to switch to wheat and other food crops in return for compensatory improvements in their lives, Mr. Arlacchi said, "Afghanistan remains by far the largest opium supplier in the world."

Now, with United Nations funding running out and opium still Afghanistan's leading cash crop, the pilot projects will end this year, Mr. Arlacchi said, "given lack of financial and political support."

Afghanistan's production of opium, the essential raw ingredient of heroin, was estimated at just over 3,600 tons this year, a decline from the record 5,100 tons in 1999.

But the drop was caused mainly by a severe drought in southern Afghanistan and not by any effort by the Taliban to make peasants grow something other than opium poppies. A previous decree that farmers reduce their areas under opium cultivation by one-third has been widely ignored by the farmers and the Taliban authorities.

Half of Afghanistan's opium is consumed as heroin by addicts in neighboring Pakistan and Iran, Mr. Arlacchi said. The rest is smuggled out to heroin markets in Europe, usually via Turkey and the Balkans.

Afghanistan planted nearly 203,000 acres in opium poppies this year, a slight decline from last year, again apparently because of bad weather. United Nations officials hoped that the drought might encourage some farmers to revert to traditional crops. But the poor harvest may leave indebted farmers with no choice but to keep raising opium.

Opium growing is encouraged by Afghanistan's rugged, often remote terrain and a long-running civil war that has bred lawlessness and defiance of authority.

Afghan farmers can earn about $14 per pound of opium, considerably more than they do from other crops, United Nations officials say. Roughly 10 pounds of raw opium are used to produce 1 pound of heroin. At the consuming end, the cost of a pound of uncut heroin in Europe or the United States can exceed $40,000.

Opium poppies are grown in 22 of Afghanistan's 32 provinces, but 6 provinces in the south account for 92 percent of the opium producing area. Moreover, 97 percent of this land is irrigated, proof that precious water is diverted to opium poppies at the expense of other crops.

The Taliban, a militant Islamic movement that fought its way into power, controls an estimated 91 percent of the Afghan villages visited by United Nations surveyors, compared with 9 percent controlled by opposition forces in the north. But the Taliban's territory contains 96 percent of the country's opium poppy fields, up from about 90 percent last year.

Mr. Arlacchi visited Afghanistan three years ago and secured assurances of cooperation from the Taliban, which considers drug use contrary to Islamic precepts, at least in theory. Since then, he said, "There was no substantial improvement in our relationship."

The United Nations drug control office will continue its annual survey of Afghanistan's opium cultivation and harvest yield, conducted by Afghan nationals who have been able to move about the country and interview opium growers and local officials.

The United Nations has also encouraged a cordon by Afghanistan's neighbors - Pakistan, Iran, Tadjikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and China - to block or intercept drug smugglers. Russian border guards have been deployed along Tadjikistan's porous frontier with Afghanistan. And Iran, which has an increasing drug problem, has stationed 20,000 police officers on its Afghan border, Mr. Arlacchi said.

He said he believed that alternative development was an ideal solution for the world's illegal drug problem. But the "emergency" solution in the shorter term, he said, was for Afghanistan's neighbors to strengthen their security belt and for Western countries to reduce the demand for heroin.

---

Protesters rally for marijuana legislation

USA Today
09/17/00
http://usatoday.com/news/nphoto.htm

PHOTO: Protesters calling for the legalization of marijuana hold signs in the shape of U.S. coins at the Marijuana Freedom Rally on Boston Common in Boston, Saturday. (Michael Dwyer, AP)

BOSTON - What was billed as a rally to support marijuana legislation Saturday turned into a drug festival on Boston Common with 40,000 people, many of them minors illegally smoking marijuana. Police arrested 67 people for marijuana possession during the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition's 11th Annual Freedom rally. Another person was arrested for possession of 100 hits of acid, and two people were arrested for prostitution. The rally was intended to raise awareness about using voting power to get marijuana legalized, but many of the attendees weren't old enough to cast a ballot.

---

USA Today
09/17/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

California

San Bernardino - Authorities seized 15,000 marijuana plants worth about $45 million in the Lytle Creek area of the San Bernardino National forest this week. Sheriff's investigators believe a Mexican cartel is behind the operation, which may be linked to a 4,000-plant farm found in a Ventura County canyon earlier this month.

-------- india/pakistan

Two Hundred Rebels Surrender in India

Yahoo News
Friday September 15
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000915/wl/india_rebels_dc_1.html

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - Two hundred guerrillas fighting Indian rule in the northeastern state of Assam surrendered to the government on Friday, a government spokesman said.

The guerrillas were all members of the hardcore United Liberation Front of Asom which has been fighting for an independent homeland.

They gave up arms following differences with the ULFA leadership, government spokesman Manoj Kumar Deb told Reuters from the eastern town of Nagaon where the surrender took place.

The militants, who handed over guns, ammunition, grenades and explosives, will be taken to rehabilitation camps where they will be given vocational training to help them get jobs, he said.

Formed in 1979, ULFA is seeking independence for an estimated 25 million people of the oil and tea-rich Assam region of India.

Police officials say that the guerrilla group is riven with dissent and in recent weeks clashes have taken place within the group in which at least 10 militants died earlier this month.

India's northeastern region, is home to more than 200 ethnic groups and has been rocked by violence for more than a century.

-------- korea

S. Korea to start work on railway to North

USA Today
09/17/00
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwssun02.htm

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea on Monday will start rebuilding a railway linking the capitals of the two Koreas and a four-lane highway running alongside it, the Ministry of Construction said.

In a sign of growing reconciliation after a half century of hostility, the Koreas agreed last month to reconnect the major railway that links Seoul to Pyongyang, then continues on to Shinuiju, a major city on the North's border with China. The line was cut off shortly before the Korean War started in 1950.

The agreement to reconnect the capitals by rail followed the historic inter-Korean summit in June.

The South Korean government has allotted $50 million to rebuild the 12-mile stretch of railway on its side and thousands of soldiers will be used to clear mines inside the 2-mile-wide demilitarized zone through which it passes, the ministry said Sunday. Work is expected to be completed in one year.

North Korea is also expected to use soldiers to rebuild the 5 miles of rail line on its side.

The Korean border, the world's most heavily fortified, is lined with an estimated 1 million mines. About 2 million troops are deployed in both sides.

Also on Monday, South Korea will start building a $91 million four-lane highway along the railway that will connect major expressways already in service in both Koreas.

The railroad and highway should boost trade between the countries and give South Korea a link to China and Russia's trans-Siberian railway, through which Seoul hopes to deliver products to Europe.

Long-icy inter-Korean relations have thawed significantly since South Korean President Kim Dae-jung visited Pyongyang in June to hold a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The southern leader said Kim Jong Il will make his return visit to Seoul next spring. It would mark an important milestone in improving inter-Korean relations. The two Koreas will hold the first talks between their defense ministers since the Korean War on Sept. 25-26 on a South Korean island, Seoul's Ministry of Defense said Sunday.

South Korea's Defense Minister Cho Sung-tae and Kim Il Chul, minister for North Korea's People's Army, will meet in Cheju island, the ministry said.

Since the summit, the two sides have stopped propaganda broadcasts and reopened border liaison offices. Their athletes marched together behind a unification flag during the opening ceremonies at the Sydney Olympics.

The two Koreas each allowed 100 people to cross the border in August for temporary reunions with families they haven't seen for half a century. Two more reunions are planned before year's end.

The Korean Peninsula was divided into communist North Korea and pro-Western South Korea in 1945 at the end of the World War II.

-------- russia

FIRST IN A SERIES
War Has No Rules for Russian Forces Battling Chechen Rebels
Troops admit committing atrocities against guerrillas and civilians.
It's part of the military culture of impunity, they say.
But many now have troubled consciences.

Los Angeles Times
Sunday, September 17, 2000
By MAURA REYNOLDS, Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_crimes000917.htm

"I remember a Chechen female sniper. We just tore her apart with two armored personnel carriers, having tied her ankles with steel cables. There was a lot of blood, but the boys needed it."

MOSCOW--They call it bespredel--literally, "no limits." It means acting outside the rules, violently and with impunity. It translates as "excesses" or "atrocities."

It's the term Russian soldiers use to describe their actions in Chechnya.

"Without bespredel, we'll get nowhere in Chechnya," a 21-year-old conscript explained. "We have to be cruel to them. Otherwise, we'll achieve nothing."

Since Russia launched a new war against separatist rebels in its republic of Chechnya a year ago, Russian and Western human rights organizations have collected thousands of pages of testimony from victims about human rights abuses committed by Russian servicemen against Chechen civilians and suspected rebel fighters.

To hear the other side of the story, a Times reporter traveled to more than half a dozen regions around Russia and interviewed more than two dozen Russian servicemen returning from the war front. What they recounted largely matches the picture painted in the human rights reports: The men freely acknowledge that acts considered war crimes under international law not only take place but are also commonplace.

In fact, most admitted committing such acts themselves--everything from looting to summary executions to torture.

"There was bespredel all the time," one 35-year-old soldier said. "You can't let it get to you."

The servicemen say atrocities aren't directly ordered from above; instead, they result from a Russian military culture that glorifies ardor in battle, portrays the enemy as inhuman and has no effective system of accountability.

"Your army is based on professionalism," said a 27-year-old paratrooper who served alongside U.S. troops as a peacekeeper in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "Our army is based on fervor."

Russian officials, including the Kremlin's war spokesman, Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, have criticized the human rights reports, saying they are riddled with rumor and rebel propaganda. Officials have sometimes blamed reported atrocities on what they describe as rebel fighters dressed as Russian soldiers.

But they acknowledge that some human rights violations do occur and say they are taking steps to curb them.

"[Chechens] are Russian citizens, for whose sake the operation was undertaken in the first place," Yastrzhembsky said in an interview. "They should be treated according to the same laws as in the rest of Russia. Any violation, regardless of who commits it, must be reviewed by the procurator [investigating magistrate] and the guilty parties should be punished."

That may be the Kremlin's official position, but servicemen say things are different on the ground. In part because of media coverage of Chechen slave-trading, torture and beheadings, the soldiers believe that the enemy is guilty of far worse atrocities. Although they know that executions and other human rights violations are wrong, they also consider them an unavoidable--even necessary--part of waging war, especially against such a foe.

In their view, human rights workers and other critics are simply squeamish about the real nature of war.

"What rules? What Geneva Conventions? What difference does it make if Russia has signed them?" said a 25-year-old army officer. "I didn't sign them, none of my friends signed them. . . . In Russia, these rules don't work."

Perhaps most important, the servicemen described a pervasive and powerful culture of impunity in the Russian armed forces. They believe that authorities say one thing in public but deliberately turn a blind eye to many war crimes. A few even said investigators helped cover up such atrocities. Right or wrong, the soldiers are confident that authorities will make no serious effort to investigate war zone misconduct.

"You don't make it obvious, and they don't look too hard," another 21-year-old conscript said. "Everyone understands that's the way it works."

Many of the servicemen admitted having troubled consciences. But like a mantra, most repeated what they had been taught--that whether one likes it or not, going to war means acting bespredel.

"What kind of human rights can there be in wartime?" said a 31-year-old police commando. "It's fine to violate human rights within certain limits."

"The main thing is to have them die slowly. You don't want them to die fast, because a fast death is an easy death." --Andrei

Andrei's pale eyes glow against his tanned skin. He's been home only 10 days. He opens and closes kitchen cabinets, searching confusedly for sugar for his tea. "I still haven't gotten used to domestic life," he apologizes. He has just turned 21.

During basic training, he recalls, Red Cross workers came to his base to teach about human rights and the rules of war.

"They tried to teach us all kinds of nonsense, like that you should treat civilians 'politely,' " he says. "If you behave 'politely' during wartime, I promise you, nothing good will come of it. I don't know about other wars, but in Chechnya, if they don't understand what you say, you have to beat it into them. You need the civilians to fear you. There's no other way."

Andrei says the lesson that stuck was the one his commander taught him: how to kill.

"We caught one guy--he had a fold-up [radio] antenna. He gave us a name, but when we beat him he gave us a different name. We found maps in his pockets, and hashish. He tried to tell us he was looking for food for his mother. My commander said, 'Stick around and I'll teach you how to deal with these guys.' He took the antenna and began to hit him with it. You could tell by the look in [the Chechen's] eyes that he knew we were going to kill him.

"We shot him. There were five of us who shot him. We dumped his body in the river. The river was full of bodies. Ours, too. Three of our guys washed up without heads."

Andrei says he knows that officially, Russian troops are supposed to turn all suspected rebels over to military procurators. But in practice, his unit literally took no prisoners.

"Once they have a bruise, they're already as good as dead," Andrei says. "They know they won't make it to the procurator's office. You can see it in their eyes. They never tell us anything, but then again, we never ask. We do it out of spite, because if they can torture our soldiers, why shouldn't we torture them?

"The easiest way is to heat your bayonet over charcoal, and when it's red-hot, to put it on their bodies, or stab them slowly. You need to make sure they feel as much pain as possible. The main thing is to have them die slowly. You don't want them to die fast, because a fast death is an easy death. They should get the full treatment. They should get what they deserve. On one hand it looks like an atrocity, but on the other hand, it's easy to get used to.

"I killed about nine people this way. I remember all of them."

Taking No Prisoners Servicemen say the type and frequency of bespredel vary significantly from one unit to another. A few said such things never happened in their units. But even they knew of incidents involving other units.

Other than looting, the most common crime recounted to The Times was the execution of suspected rebels.

"We called it 'taking them to the police station,' " said one police commando. "The nearest police station was 300 kilometers [about 200 miles] away. In reality, they wouldn't make it farther than the next corner."

Nearly all of the servicemen interviewed said they didn't bother taking prisoners--after all, for them it was the safest thing to do.

"We had a clear-cut policy with prisoners: We didn't take any," said another police commando. "To be more precise, we did take one prisoner once and tried to hand him over to the procurator's office. But one of our men was wounded on the way, and then we decided--no more prisoners. What's the point? We already risk our lives greatly when we fight against them. Why risk them again to save the lives of fighters and give them the chance to go to jail when what they deserve is death? . . . You can carry out the sentence right on the spot."

The summary executions don't just take place against suspected fighters. One 33-year-old army officer recounted how he drowned a family of five--four women and a middle-aged man--in their own well.

"You should not believe people who say Chechens are not being exterminated. In this Chechen war, it's done by everyone who can do it," he said. "There are situations when it's not possible. But when an opportunity presents itself, few people miss it.

"I don't know what it is, bespredel or not," he continued. "But it is a war. A war is a very cruel thing, and matters of life and death should not be judged by civilian standards."

Mutilation of corpses and torture were reported less frequently but clearly were common in a number of units. Several servicemen interviewed for this report confirmed that some members of Russian special forces cut off the ears of their victims in a revenge ritual.

"Cutting ears may seem savage to some, but it has its explanations," said one commander. "It's an old tradition among the special forces--you cut off the ears of the enemy in order to later lay them on the tombstone of your friend who was killed in the war. . . . It's not a manifestation of barbarism. It's just our way of telling our deceased mate: Rest in peace. You have been avenged."

"I would kill all the men I met during mopping-up operations. I didn't feel sorry for them one bit." --Boris

Boris' body was both built and broken by years of boxing. His face, hands and torso have the strength and subtlety of cinder blocks. Since he returned from the war zone, he has had trouble sleeping at night.

"Sometimes I fear I will not be able to control myself, especially after a couple of drinks," the thirtysomething police commando says. "I wake up in a cold sweat, all enraged, and all I can see is dead bodies, blood and screams. At that moment, I'm ready to go as far as it takes. I think if I were given weapons and grenades, I would head out and start 'mopping up' my own hometown."

He says he can no longer remember all the people he killed.

"I killed a lot. I wouldn't touch women or children, as long as they didn't fire at me. But I would kill all the men I met during mopping-up operations. I didn't feel sorry for them one bit. They deserved it," he says. "I wouldn't even listen to the pleas or see the tears of their women when they asked me to spare their men. I simply took them aside and killed them."

When he came home from Chechnya, he resigned from his unit. He says he's happy to be in a regular job. And he's trying to forget the war.

But there are some things he can't forget.

"I remember a Chechen female sniper. She didn't have any chance of making it to the authorities. We just tore her apart with two armored personnel carriers, having tied her ankles with steel cables. There was a lot of blood, but the boys needed it. After this, a lot of the boys calmed down. Justice was done, and that was the most important thing for them.

"We would also throw fighters off the helicopters before landing. The trick was to pick the right altitude. We didn't want them to die right away. We wanted them to suffer before they died. Maybe it's cruel, but in a war, that's almost the only way to dull the fear and sorrow of losing your friends."

Killing for Revenge

Notions of provocation and revenge are central to the servicemen's mind-set. In Russian culture, a man not only has the right but is also honor-bound to respond to a "provocation." When a Russian serviceman is killed or mistreated by the enemy, his comrades must take revenge.

Nearly all of the servicemen who recounted incidents of bespredel--a slang term that originated in Russia's prisons--described them as revenge attacks for the deaths of their comrades.

"When you see your mates drop down on the ground, when you take your dead and wounded to the hospital, this is when hatred rises within you," said a 23-year-old army officer. "And the hatred is against all Chechens, not just the individual enemies who killed your friends. This is when bespredel starts."

These tendencies in Russian military culture have been intensified by a virulent Russian hatred of the Chechens--a hatred running higher in this conflict than in the 1994-96 war in the republic.

A major reason is the blood-curdling acts of the Chechen fighters themselves--while enjoying de facto independence for three years, many ran brutal kidnapping gangs that abducted Russian hostages, some of whom were tortured and killed. Russian TV reports have repeatedly broadcast gory footage of atrocities allegedly committed by the Chechens, including mutilations and beheadings.

"Why should human rights be respected only from one direction?" a police commando complained. "It's always from our side and never from theirs."

Russia's human rights critics don't dispute the monstrosity of the crimes committed by Chechens. But Malcolm Hawkes, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, points out that according to international law, "Russia is obliged to respect human rights regardless of abuses committed by the other side."

Military analyst Alexander I. Zhilin, a retired air force colonel, says that's a hard standard to live by in the heat of war.

"Russian soldiers ask themselves and their commanders simple questions: 'Why can the Chechens do anything they want, kill right and left, and get away with it? Why are our hands tied?' " Zhilin said. "Sometimes commanders have to turn a blind eye to these terrible things because this is the only way to prevent a mutiny among soldiers, or often because they simply feel the same way."

Moreover, after a series of bomb attacks in Moscow and elsewhere last year that killed more than 300 people, the Russian public and Russian servicemen have accepted the official line that this is not a war against unsavory separatists but a fight against inhuman "bandits and terrorists."

The view has been enhanced by a barrage of news reports depicting the fighters as mercenaries and religious fanatics, many of them from other countries. While it's unclear what proportion of the fighters come from outside Russia, many of the servicemen were convinced that it was a majority--making it easier to consider them alien.

Sergei Kovalyov, a Soviet-era dissident who served as human rights commissioner in Chechnya during the first war until he was fired for his outspokenness, says the Kremlin fosters a culture of impunity that makes it all but certain that some excesses might take place.

"As usual, it is the authorities who are to blame because they deliberately refuse to do what they should do--monitor the situation, suppress unlawful actions and severely punish the guilty. But they deliberately do not do it," he said.

"If one were to make a list of those guilty of the cruel treatment of peaceful civilians, one should start with President [Vladimir V.] Putin," Kovalyov said. "He knows perfectly well what is happening."

And that, Kovalyov said, is "not too far from genocide."

"It's much easier to kill them all. It takes less time for them to die than to grow." --Valery

Valery is a personnel officer, what in Soviet times would have been called a commissar. He's a lieutenant colonel responsible for morale and discipline. He shouldn't talk to reporters.

But the night is dark, the beer from the roadside kiosk outside his army base is cold, and he has a lot on his mind. He checks documents, then launches into a diatribe.

"In this war, the attitude toward the Chechens is much harsher. All of us are sick and tired of waging a war without results," he says. "How long can you keep making a fuss over their national pride and traditions? The military has realized that Chechens cannot be re-educated. Fighting against Russians is in their blood. They have robbed, killed and stolen our cattle for all their lives. They simply don't know how to do anything else. . . .

"We shouldn't have given them time to prepare for the war," he continues. "We should have slaughtered all Chechens over 5 years old and sent all the children that could still be re-educated to reservations with barbed wire and guards at the corners. . . . But where would you find teachers willing to sacrifice their lives to re-educate these wolf cubs? There are no such people. Therefore, it's much easier to kill them all. It takes less time for them to die than to grow."

Valery was in Chechnya in the early phase of the war, when he says there was little oversight from the high command and there were no pesky journalists.

"Now the press sets up a howl after the death of every Chechen. It has become impossible to work. We know very well that thousands of eyes are watching us closely. How are we expected to fight the bandits in such circumstances?

"The solution, in fact, would have been very easy--the old methods used by Russian troops in the Caucasus in the 19th century. For the death of every soldier, an entire village was burned to ashes. For the death of every officer, two villages would be wiped out. This is the only way this war can be brought to a victorious end and this rogue nation conquered."

Valery acknowledges that atrocities occur but says that, in effect, soldiers are carrying out a policy the government needs but is afraid to declare. "For political reasons, it's impossible to murder the entire adult population and send the children to reservations," he says. "But sometimes, one can try to approximate the goal."

Doing the Job Right

Russia has deployed a motley force of 100,000 in Chechnya. The men have different reasons for going, and they have different jobs when they get there.

The job of seizing territory falls largely to federal forces, under the Defense Ministry, which include elite paratrooper and special forces units, as well as infantry and artillery regiments composed of both conscript and contract soldiers.

The job of holding territory and weeding out rebels from the local population--so-called mopping-up operations--falls largely to troops under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry. Among them are elite police commandos, known as OMON and SOBR, as well as enlisted Interior Ministry troops consisting of both conscripts and contract soldiers.

Russia's first war in Chechnya was largely--and badly--fought by conscripts. By law, all Russian men are supposed to serve for two years starting at age 18, and in the previous war many found themselves in the war zone before they knew how to fire their rifles.

This war was supposed to be different, to be fought mostly by second-year conscripts and professional soldiers. But contract soldiers, while older, are not really professional. They are largely men who sign up for the money. All have served their time as conscripts, and some have served several tours of duty--often because they find themselves unable to hold down a civilian job.

"I signed up because I have nothing else to do," said one, who admitted that he had just split up with his wife and has been unable to find a regular job. "If things were normal here, I wouldn't go, but the way things are, what other choice do I have?"

The elite police forces, while highly trained, also are not exactly combat soldiers. The OMON is largely schooled in riot and crowd control, SOBR in fighting organized crime. They are sent to Chechnya on two-or three-month assignments.

The police special forces and career soldiers tend to be older, and most have families at home. If they refuse an assignment in Chechnya, they face discipline or dishonor before their comrades. So, many take the assignments and, once in the war zone, do whatever it takes to return home safely.

To induce the contract soldiers and police troops to sign up, the Russian government offers hefty combat pay--800 rubles a day, about $28. At home, career soldiers and police earn only about 1,500 rubles, about $50, in an entire month. That's an average wage, but even in Russia it doesn't go very far.

Many said the money is a powerful incentive.

"Look out the window," said one army officer, interviewed on his military base. "You'll see a whole line of new cars parked outside."

While the career soldiers and elite police forces face professional pressure to serve in Chechnya, contract soldiers are volunteers, viewed with suspicion by many of the other branches as little more than mercenaries.

"The worst thing is when a person goes to Chechnya to make money," said a 34-year-old OMON officer. "A person who does that should really have his head examined by a psychiatrist, for this person clearly has a propensity for sadism."

"So there will be one Chechen less on the planet, so what? Who will cry for him?" --Gennady

Gennady is a paratrooper and proud of it. He's wearing a telnyashka, the paratroopers' trademark striped undershirt, and a robin's-egg-blue beret studded with badges. It's Paratroopers' Day, and the 24-year-old has come to a city park to meet his pals and trade war stories. He spent a few months in Chechnya last winter and expects to return this fall.

Gennady says his officers taught him to trust no one in Chechnya, not even the children.

"There were cases when small kids would run to the middle of the road, right in front of a moving convoy of trucks and APCs. And they were shot dead right on the spot by soldiers who thought the kid could be carrying a mine or a grenade. Hell knows, maybe they weren't. But it is better to be safe than sorry."

Gennady says that although he's been home for a few months, his hatred hasn't abated.

"I hated them when I fought in Chechnya, and I hate them now. I can't even watch TV when it shows Chechens--I feel all my muscles start to ache and I want to smash something."

Gennady says the most important lesson his commanders taught him was: Shoot first. Think later.

"Our officers would always teach us: Be careful, do not feel ashamed to be afraid of everything. Fear is your friend, not your enemy, in Chechnya. It will help you stay alive and come back home to your families. If you see someone who looks suspicious, even a child, do not hesitate--shoot first and only then think. Your personal safety is priority No. 1. All the rest does not matter. So there will be one Chechen less on the planet, so what? Who will cry for him? Your task is to complete the mission and return home unscathed."

Fearing Only Fear

Most of the interviewed servicemen describe a corrosive atmosphere of fear and isolation in the war zone that was often relieved by acts of violence against Chechens, both fighters and civilians.

Such fear was compounded by the difficulty of coordinating between so many different kinds of Defense and Interior Ministry forces; soldiers reported frequent misunderstandings, including an unnerving number of casualties from "friendly fire."

"You can't imagine anything more horrible than the sight of your buddy, who was at your side a few minutes ago, blown to pieces, bits of his flesh steaming in the snow," said one 19-year-old conscript. "Especially when it's your own side that did it."

As a result, many Russian units feel vulnerable and isolated on the battlefield. They aren't sure that they can count on other units to keep them supplied and safe, and tend to assume that they have to fend for themselves.

One theme repeated by many of the servicemen is that in the war zone, each unit's commander was left more or less to set his own standards.

"I was lucky I wound up in a good regiment that wasn't a madhouse, with a normal commander," said the 35-year-old soldier. "Everything depends on the commander."

Moreover, most of the servicemen had been told that the Chechens had a special animosity for their particular unit--that they would suffer excruciating torture at Chechen hands if they had the misfortune to be captured. True or not, those stories induced many Russian servicemen to assume the worst about any Chechen they met--man, woman, young, old.

"Our commander told us all the time, 'There's no such thing as a Chechen civilian,'" a conscript said.

Finally, the servicemen said they resort to atrocities because the authorities--both the political leadership and the judicial system--leave them unprotected.

"Bespredel emerges when soldiers know that the state is too far away or too little interested in supporting or controlling servicemen," said one 25-year-old police commando. "And then everyone starts acting on his own, making his own decisions on the spot. Everyone is responsible for his own life. How decently he does that depends on his individual experiences, both good and bad, and on his level of cynicism."

"War crimes have no expiration date. . . . When you die, you will have to answer to God." --Denis

Denis is a major with the elite police forces. He is a training and morale officer, and he accompanied a contingent of his men to Chechnya last winter.

He acknowledges that servicemen don't have much to fear from the military procurator and other investigators.

"It's easy for a person to get away with almost everything," he says. "You take this wretched Chechen down into a basement or a cellar under the guise of checking his documents in a quiet place. And then you just knock him off the way you want. There are no eyewitnesses, and no one will say anything.

"Usually it happens like this: You walk along the street and see a house with a basement. Why stupidly enter it? Why risk your life for nothing if you can avoid it? At best you just spray gunfire around, at worst you throw a couple of hand grenades into the basement. . . . In a war, you have to do your job and stay alive. If I walked into every single basement I had to check before securing the place by throwing in grenades, you would not be talking to me now."

Denis took photos of one incident. His unit was preparing to lift off in a helicopter when the troops were warned that a Chechen sniper was in the area. They found him hiding in the bushes near the helicopter pad, armed with an antitank grenade launcher.

"We did not talk much," he remembers. "The officers began to try to convince the soldiers not to execute the guy without a trial, but the soldiers said, 'No way.' . . . They took him to the side and unloaded their clips right into his body--90 bullets altogether.

"I took photographs of him before the execution, and I also photographed his dead body afterward. Boy, he looked terrible--the bullets broke his fingers and disfigured his palms. They turned his face and head into a bloody mess. He looked like a pile of fresh meat clothed in blood-soaked rags."

When he returned home, Denis printed the photos.

"Sometime later I took a look at them and thought to myself: 'Why on earth do I need these pictures? Who am I going to show them to?'"

So he destroyed them.

Denis says he was troubled by that incident and others. But that's the kind of thing that happens in a war.

"Any war is a legitimized right granted by the government to one person to decide on the life and death of another person. . . . When soldiers go to Chechnya for the first time, they are afraid of that responsibility just as they are afraid to die. But as time goes by, they look at other soldiers who are on their second or third trip and they change. They come to understand that they have much broader powers than back home. This power intoxicates them--in fact, they can do whatever they want when no one is watching, and they will get away with it.

"But war crimes have no expiration date," he concludes. "And every one of us knows that if you do something bad, you will have to live with it for the rest of your life. And when you die, you will have to answer to God."

Fighting 'Total War'

The Soviet Union signed the Geneva Conventions after the end of World War II. Officially, that means that Russia's armed forces are obligated to abide by the principles of the accord: that civilians and combatants who have surrendered should be treated humanely and that violence of any sort or execution of war prisoners is forbidden.

But in a guerrilla war, experts say, it is nearly impossible to separate combatants from noncombatants.

"In a partisan war, it's hard for even the best armies to maintain standards of conduct," said Jacob Kipp, a professor at the University of Kansas and an expert on the Russian army.

All the same, Kipp and other analysts say, the Russian armed forces have a few cultural features that make wartime atrocities more likely than in Western armies.

First of all, public debate over the morality of a war focuses on whether it was right to begin hostilities in the first place; unlike in the West, there is no tradition of asking whether the way the war is waged is also moral.

"Russians come from a tradition that all war is 'total war,' " Kipp said. "After you've made the decision that it's right to start a war, there isn't any notion that there can and should be limits on how you conduct the war."

Second, the Soviet army tolerated a higher level of casualties than Western armies, a mind-set that continues. Some servicemen said they were convinced that their commanders considered them expendable.

"In Russia, winning wars has always been a matter of quantity, not quality," said one conscript. "They don't even count us as losses. We're just meat. A conscript is nothing in the army. It's like a chain--the generals don't value our lives, so we don't value the lives of the Chechens."

Third, the Russian public has been overwhelmingly in favor of the war. For most of the past year, polls reported that between 60% and 70% of Russians supported continuing the hostilities.

In such a climate, the subject of atrocities committed by the Russian side is all but taboo in Russian society. However, not a single person interviewed on or off the record for this story--not high-ranking officials and not low-ranking servicemen--denied that Russian troops in Chechnya have committed war crimes and violated human rights.

"It's a real problem, and you're right to bring it up," war spokesman Yastrzhembsky said. "It's well known in the army. The command is working on it. But it's a difficult issue that doesn't lend itself to a quick solution."

Finally, a major difficulty Russia faces in addressing the issue of atrocities is that the Russian armed forces--unlike Western armies--have no effective system of accountability for wartime conduct.

Kremlin officials say they are doing all they can to find and punish servicemen guilty of human rights abuses.

"Neither I nor the president has ever said there are no violations of human rights in Chechnya. . . ," said Vladimir A. Kalamanov, President Putin's special representative for human rights in Chechnya. "We are working as fast as we can so that these violations of human rights will disappear from the political map of the Chechen republic."

But the interviewed servicemen painted a different picture. Not only do the authorities not make a serious effort to investigate war zone misconduct, they said, but they also sometimes go further. The 23-year-old army officer recounted how investigators from the military procurator's office and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, helped his unit cover up war crimes such as the summary execution of detainees.

"The FSB officers would always write in their reports: 'Killed in cross-fire,' " he said. "They would never give away our soldiers. There's always been mutual understanding. It's the same as if your son kills a bandit--would you go and report him to the police? Of course not. The same with the FSB. They were on our side. They understood us and supported us."

The military procurator's office, which operates today much as it did in Soviet times, tends to focus on misconduct within the ranks--offenses such as hazing and selling service weapons--not the treatment of civilians and enemy fighters. The military procurator's headquarters in Moscow and its North Caucasus department in the southern city of Rostov denied The Times' repeated requests for an interview or written information.

Yastrzhembsky and Kalamanov acknowledged that only a fraction of investigations of crimes involving servicemen has been completed. They provided the following figures: Of 467 criminal investigations opened by the military procurator since the start of the war, only 72 have led to indictments. Only 14 are for crimes against civilians. None has gone to trial.

Moreover, that's only half the story. The military procurator has jurisdiction over only the federal forces. Misconduct by servicemen under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry is handled by the civilian general procurator's office.

For instance, according to documents obtained by The Times, investigation of the largest massacre allegedly committed by Russian troops--the killings of at least 62 civilians in the Grozny suburb of Aldy on Feb. 5--was transferred from the military procurator to the general procurator's office last spring because police troops allegedly were involved.

It is unclear how actively the general procurator's office is pursuing such investigations. In written responses to The Times, the general procurator's office said that, since the start of the war, it has indicted 179 servicemen for crimes of all sorts, from minor military infractions such as mishandling weapons to murder.

The chief spokesman for the general procurator's office, Leonid Troshin, said he couldn't say how many of the servicemen have been charged with serious crimes or crimes against civilians, or whether any of them had been convicted. And he declined to provide an update on the progress of investigations into the Aldy massacre or other incidents documented by human rights groups.

"The number of crimes committed by [rebel] fighters by far surpasses the number of crimes committed by Russian servicemen," Troshin said when asked by telephone to elaborate on his written statement. "This is exactly what we have been trying to prove."

One of the few people who have broached the subject of Russian atrocities in public is Aslambek Aslakhanov, a retired police general who was elected Chechnya's deputy in parliament in an August ballot that many viewed as a Kremlin propaganda exercise.

But his descriptions of what he calls Russian troops' "arbitrary violence and unlawfulness" have gone unreported in the state media and were reported only cursorily in the independent media. Aslakhanov says that's because it's hard for anyone--in either the government or the public at large--to face the truth.

"One's ears love to hear that things are going well. It's hard to believe what is happening, that this could be taking place at the end of the 20th century," he said. "If Russian society knew the truth about what was happening in Chechnya, they would completely change their minds about Chechens as a people, and they would take steps to remove this pain, to right this wrong."

Aslakhanov said he fully supports the use of force to rid the republic of the rebels, who he says have brought his people nothing but ruin. But he also insisted that war zone misconduct and atrocities are unworthy of Russia. And they risk undermining whatever victory is eventually achieved in Chechnya--both by earning the enduring enmity of the Chechens and by besmirching Russia's reputation around the world.

"There are many people even among the military who say this must end," Aslakhanov said. "But it is like dirty laundry that they don't want to air in public.

"But you have to learn the truth before you can solve anything."

Russian servicemen warn that the large amount of bespredel on the Russian side is not only harming Chechens, it's also creating a new generation of troubled Russian men with deep psychological problems, many of whom are violent. Many of the returning servicemen said they were experiencing symptoms such as nightmares and an inability to control their anger. Many said they or their comrades were drinking heavily.

One 40-year-old police officer warned: "There are not enough psychologists in all of Russia to treat those who are returning."

---

Ex-POW's identity may have been discovered

Nando Times
September 17, 2000 8:36 p.m. EDT
By ALEX BANDY, Associated Press
http://www.nandotimes.com/global/story/0%2C1024%2C500258696-500398291-502378067-0%2C00.html

BUDAPEST, Hungary (http://www.nandotimes.com) - Authorities have reportedly established the identity of a former war prisoner who returned to Hungary last month after spending 53 years lost and forgotten in a Russian mental hospital.

DNA tests expected to be completed in about two weeks will remove the last shred of doubt that the man is Andras Toma, a former blacksmith's apprentice from the eastern village of Sujanbokor, TV2 television reported Sunday.

The elderly man returned to Hungary on Aug. 11, marking the end of a strange and tragic saga that spanned more than half a century, most of it spent in virtual isolation among people with whom he could not even communicate.

He was apparently one of the 150,000 Hungarian troops who fought under Nazi command at the Don River in 1944. According to Russian records, the man was among prisoners of war sent by train from western Russia to a prison camp in Siberia.

He seemed to be suffering from psychological problems, so guards took him off the train when it passed near the Russian town of Kotelnich and left him at the hospital, where he and his past were forgotten. For years, no one knew who he was until an encounter with a Hungarian-speaking Russian unlocked the mystery.

TV2 quoted Hungarian officials as saying that once back in Hungary, the man's memory began returning to the point that they were able to identify a village where he was believed to have been born.

On Saturday, with a crew from TV2 in tow, he was taken to the village, Sujanbokor, for a meeting with other aged Hungarians believed to have been his schoolmates. In their company, he recalled names of teachers who were working in the village whom all the others remembered.

Also on hand were two people believed to have been his siblings - Anna and Janos Toma. They will give blood samples for DNA tests, TV2 said.

"He looks just like our dad, and all the bits he said fit," Anna Toma said during an interview broadcast Sunday.

The Tomas were not among the 80 Hungarian families who had contacted authorities believing the man might have been a lost relative. They were tracked down instead by a team of Hungarian military officers.

As a result, Dr. Andras Veer, director of the Hungarian National Psychiatric and Neurological Hospital, told the television station that a team plans to visit five Russian mental hospitals to determine whether other Hungarian prisoners may have been transferred there.

TV2 said that Hungarian authorities believe the man was held at a prison camp east of St. Petersburg along with mostly German prisoners.

By January 1947 he was showing signs of mental instability and was then transferred to the Kotelnich hospital. The prison camp was closed two months later and records were apparently lost.

-------- space

Space Station Astronauts Install Treadmill in Orbit

New York Times
September 17, 2000
National News Briefs
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/national/17NATI.html

HOUSTON, Sept. 16 (AP) - The crew of space shuttle Atlantis installed a treadmill aboard the international space station today, the last substantial task on this mission inside the orbiting complex.

The seven-member crew also began wrapping up the transfer of 6,000 pounds of supplies and equipment for the station's first permanent residents, who arrive in November.

At the shuttle's launching and landing site, NASA braced for Hurricane Gordon, churning out in the Gulf of Mexico and heading toward Florida. Kennedy Space Center workers prepared for a rollback of the space shuttle Discovery into its hangar.

Discovery is scheduled to blast off on a space-station construction mission on Oct. 5.

Today the crew fit the treadmill into a pit in the floor of a service module.

Astronauts must exercise while in orbit to prevent their muscles from atrophying. The station's first permanent crew, an American and two Russians due for a four-month stay, will be the first to use the treadmill.

Atlantis' crew has just one more day inside the station. The crew will seal up the station on Sunday, and return to Earth early Wednesday.

-------- u.n.

An International Court

New York TImes
September 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/opinion/L17UNI.html

To the Editor:

Robert Wright ("The Peace That's Within Our Grasp," Op-Ed, Sept. 12) warns that a policy of United Nations peacekeeping in civil wars could undermine the organization's credibility and weaken its role internationally. Yet armed intervention by those acting without United Nations authorization itself raises serious issues of legitimacy and international peace and security.

One hundred and twelve countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Russia, recently signed a statute to criminalize genocide and certain other atrocities, even if committed in "internal" conflicts, and to establish a permanent court to help assure prosecution of violators. Ratification of the statute and support of the court by the United States could deter conduct that might otherwise give rise to future interventions, and would legitimately strengthen the hand of international law without undermining the credibility or legitimacy of the United Nations.

DONALD M. FERENCZ White Plains, Sept. 14, 2000

-------- u.s.

After the tank As the Army eyes a new generation of nimble weapons, soldiers worry whether the force is going soft

U.S. News & World Report
9/18/00
By Richard J. Newman
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000918/tank.htm

FORT KNOX, KY.-Loudspeakers blare "TNT" by the heavy-metal band AC/DC as the Army's big guns come together in an orchestra of destruction. The huge 155-millimeter shells from howitzers dig craters in the distant hillside. Wire-guided missiles from Bradley fighting vehicles smash into old tank carcasses. Rockets from Apache helicopters strafe the brush.

Short of war, the combined arms live-fire exercise here is the best show there is of the Army's might and machismo. And nothing so embodies that muscle as the Army's heavy-metal showpiece, the M1A2 Abrams tank. As four of them repeatedly launch 75-pound high-explosive rounds into their targets, the air quakes with the concussion from the blasts. A grandstand 50 yards away rattles with each eruption. When the show is over, an armor officer boasts to the crowd that "with equipment such as the M1A2, the United States Army dominates land warfare."

If it can get to the battle. The reality is that the 70-ton Abrams, despite a storied past, is simply too big and heavy to transport quickly to the kinds of conflicts the Pentagon foresees over the next several decades. This is forcing the Army to rethink how it fights and to design new, nimble battlefield systems that planners hope can take the place of heavy-armor behemoths. "The M1 is fading out," declares Maj. Gen. James Dubik, director of a series of reforms the Army calls "Transformation."

The biggest overhaul of Army tactics in decades comes at an awkward time, however. The Army already is beset by turbulence caused by personnel shortfalls, training cutbacks, and a large menu of missions. In fact, the Army is planning big cuts in its training organizations in 2001 to fulfill a promise Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, made a year ago-to plug all the staffing holes in the combat units. The training cutbacks could prompt further disputes over the state of military readiness between Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush and Democratic contender Al Gore.

Vulnerable? Many soldiers, while recognizing the demands of peacekeeping and other modern missions, fear that moving away from the tank could leave them vulnerable in a shooting war. "We jump in this big iron beast and we're invincible," says 1st Sgt. Donald Norman, assistant commandant at the NCO Academy at Fort Knox. "Now, I'm not necessarily the baddest guy on the block. I'm concerned." Army leaders anticipate months of such anxiety. The changes, says a senior Army official, "are like a family going through a divorce. It has all those emotional connotations."

The Army's turmoil, however, may be a template for the rest of the military. Defense experts have increasingly been pressuring the Pentagon to shed Cold War-era weapons in favor of new high-tech sensors to find and track enemy forces, long-range "smart" munitions to kill them from afar, and even space weapons. Bush has added to the debate, saying he would "skip a generation of technology" in reshaping the military for the future. Gore, according to advisers, agrees that the military needs to accelerate innovation but feels that axing current weapons would be too rash.

Many defense experts agree with Bush. They advocate replacing manned fighter jets with unmanned ones, for instance, and building small, stealthy missile ships instead of huge aircraft carriers. "If you think the Army is having a hard time getting away from tanks," says Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century, a conservative think tank, "just think of the Air Force giving up manned combat jets."

The tank's huge footprint has been a gnawing concern of Army strategists for over a decade. The Abrams was designed in the 1970s to outgun Soviet tanks on the plains of central Europe. On NATO's eastern flanks, autobahns and bridges were strengthened to make sure the monster machines could get to the fight quickly. Not so in the rest of the world. Even during the Gulf War, when U.S. ground forces killed upwards of 1,000 Iraqi tanks while losing just 18 of their own, war planners had concerns. "Had we been forced to go to Baghdad, many of the bridges and causeways would not have been able to handle our tanks," says Maj. Gen. B. B. Bell, chief of the Armor Center at Fort Knox. Now, improvements in armor-penetrating bullets by the Russians and others could force the Army to add even more armor-and weight-to the Abrams. "We could add armor till it weighs 100 tons and sinks to the center of the earth," quips Bell.

Roadblocks. During last year's war against Yugoslavia, Army planners discovered that moving tanks from Albania into Kosovo would have required four heavy engineering battalions working for four months to reinforce a dozen bridges along the route. "It would have totally telegraphed what we intended to do," says Bell. And even if that could be done, a force of Abrams tanks-each weighing the equivalent of 28 Chevy Suburbans-requires so much fuel and other support that an attack on supply lines could paralyze it. Other options weren't good either. The Army considered sending the elite 82d Airborne Division into Kosovo. The paratroopers could have arrived within days. But armed with little more than rifles, they might have been overwhelmed by Serbian armor before relief arrived.

In between ponderous, powerhouse units and nimble but lightly armed infantrymen, the Army found it had little that could get to the theater quickly with enough bang to make a difference. It could have combined light and heavy units, but the Army's big, division-size fighting structures make that too cumbersome. Instead, such quandaries have led the Army to revamp battle-tested armored warfare tactics that date to Lt. Gen. George Patton's sweep across Europe in 1944 and 1945. So last spring at Fort Lewis, Wash., the soldiers of the 3rd Brigade, 2d Infantry Division, turned in all 75 of their Abrams tanks. Lt. Col. Dana Pittard's battalion honored the event with a ceremony. Family members came, and the troops stood in formation as the tanks rumbled past one by one. When the last two tanks drove by, the soldiers saluted. "There was a lot of emotion," says Pittard. "As a tanker, you live and breathe armored warfare."

The brigade then got a raft of "surrogate" vehicles borrowed from Canada and elsewhere. Next year, those will be replaced by an "interim armored vehicle," or IAV, a light and lean version of a tank. The Army plans to convert as many as eight of its 32 combat brigades to such medium-weight units in the next five to 10 years-and then transition to an even more radical design its scientists are just beginning to work on.

The IAV will weigh less than 20 tons. Unlike an Abrams, it will fit on a C-130 cargo plane-the Pentagon's most plentiful transporter. That's necessary if the Army is to reach its new goal of being able to ship a full brigade anywhere in the world within 96 hours. But the IAV will also come with a big vulnerability: It may not be able to withstand the blast of weapons as small as a rocket-propelled grenade. For tank crews, that is an alarming development. Tankers today feel so secure in the belly of the beast that their motto is "death before dismount."

That may change to "hide or die." In one Army war game simulating a battle against Yugoslavia, a new "medium weight" force was pulverized by enemy artillery and by ambushes in the rugged Balkan terrain. "Loss ratios were pathetic," says an Army officer involved with the tests. For every enemy vehicle killed, the United States lost one of its own. "We prefer 10 to 1, and even much greater," says the officer.

One of the jobs of the soldiers at Fort Lewis is to figure out how to overcome those disadvantages. "When we ask about doctrine, the general will look me in the eye and say, 'We haven't answered that question yet,'" says Lt. Benjamin Hauser, who leads one of the 3rd Brigade's scout platoons."'That's why we're sending you out in the woods. To figure it out.'" The solicitousness of their leaders gives troops some confidence that the new reforms might work. Unlike other experiments of the past decade-in which the Army issued soldiers digital helmets, backpack computers, and other gizmos that haven't panned out-"this seems different," says another platoon leader. "There's just a feel . . . that this is going somewhere."

Face to face. It will probably be a bumpy road, though-especially for the career tankers who have to adjust to life on the hoof. The introductory course for many of the converts is a mock Third World village at Fort Lewis, called "Asgard." As a squad of four former tankers walks into the hamlet to do some "combat interviewing"-the Army's new term for gathering information from locals-resentful "villagers" show them none of the deference a crew atop a tank is accustomed to receiving. One young tough with tattoos and a muscle shirt chats up two of the GIs-and then tries to snatch the night-vision goggles off one of their utility belts. A merchant offers another troop a glass of rancid juice. The soldier swallows it, fearful that turning it down might be an insult. "I've never seen anything like this," says Sgt. Bill Stanford at a briefing after the exercise. "Usually as a tanker you just pull security on the outside of a town."

The Army has decided, however, that rigorous intelligence can be a more powerful weapon than a fleet of tanks. Under conventional doctrine, armored units seize and occupy huge swaths of terrain, to prevent sneak attacks by enemy forces they may not be aware of. Physically controlling so much ground requires huge attacking forces, and support units that could be four to five times as large.

With better intelligence, the Army believes it can spread its forces out more, attack enemy tank-killing units before they can get off the first shot, and dramatically reduce the "tail" required to fuel and support the combat forces. Instead of sweeping through all of Kosovo, for instance, computer models show that an intelligence-rich unit could have concentrated its forces on a number of key areas-its own supply lines, a couple of airfields, one or two major cities, and places where the Serbs were massing their forces. "We're not as worried about the terrain in between anymore because we know what's there," says a senior Army officer.

But such thorough intelligence has been an elusive holy grail for centuries. Cagey armies have always found ways to hide, camouflage themselves, and otherwise fool their opponents. During the Kosovo war, for instance, the Serbs tricked NATO's air forces into bombing dozens of phony tanks. But Army leaders now believe that a heavy emphasis on ground soldiers gathering information, along with advanced new technology, will produce the kind of intelligence breakthrough that will allow it to move beyond the tank.

In the 3rd Brigade, for instance, the Army converted an entire battalion of 400 troops from an armored shock force to an intelligence unit. That amounts to nearly five times the complement of scouts in a conventional brigade. Their mission will be to sneak close to the enemy and relay back digital pictures and computer reports of troop layouts. Other intelligence sources, such as satellites and "unmanned aerial vehicles" circling over enemy positions, will help fill out a "common battlefield picture." The master map, showing the location of all known enemy and friendly forces, will be updated continually and broadcast to commanders at all levels.

Information will be such a crucial weapon that the high ground may be reserved not for combat forces but for computer technicians. Under a concept commanders at Fort Lewis call "maneuvering the network," the goal of the brigade's movement will be not to gain the best fighting positions but to position the brigade's command-and-control vehicles, radio relay platforms, and other computer processing equipment in the best spot for transmitting and receiving. It's a daunting concept. "Cisco [the computer-networking company] has told us, no company in the world is trying to set up this kind of Internet," says Col. Tony Coroalles, chief of staff for Transformation.

The Army is also testing some novel fighting techniques. Since before the Civil War, American troops have followed the doctrine of "movement to contact"-seeking out the enemy and fighting wherever they find him. The new brigades will have to fight smarter. "We will make contact," says Maj. Jody Petery, executive officer of the 3rd Brigade's scout squadron, "but by means other than stumbling into them and being fired upon."

Since the new fighting vehicle will be at a disadvantage against enemy tanks, it will have to fight from a distance, or with the virtue of surprise. That's where the brigade's superior information becomes a killer app. Intelligence will help the unit set up ambushes, where it can slam opposing vehicles like the Russian T-72 tank in the side, to avoid a head-on confrontation. Or it will send targeting data to missile or rocket batteries hidden several miles behind the front lines. "You don't want to stand up and fight a conventional war," says David Estes, deputy director of the Mounted Maneuver Battlespace Lab at Fort Knox.

What works? For now, the Army's innovations may be the equivalent of the first clunky European tanks that creaked across World War I battlefields. It wasn't until World War II that Germany developed the blitzkrieg doctrine-including tanks, airplanes, infantrymen, and other warriors fighting together-that helped its outnumbered force roll up the French Army. But many experts deride the reforms as marginal changes that might improve the Army's image but not its performance. "It sounds like this thing isn't supposed to fight, it's just supposed to get to Albania in four days," says Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Instead of just one kind of brigade, Krepinevich believes the Army should emulate the German approach and experiment with a number of different forces: one designed for urban warfare, another for attacking enemy forces deep behind front lines, and perhaps a third operating without access to logistics bases, which are increasingly vulnerable to enemy missiles.

Relying for survival on information-instead of big guns and thick armor-also causes severe heartburn for a lot of soldiers. The new brigade "is undergunned and not survivable," complains one colonel, echoing the concern among armor troops. "This is a static outfit incapable of concentrating significant combat power." For one thing, "we're counting more on information than we have any right to," says retired Col. Rick Sinnreich, who played an enemy commander in the Army's showcase war game last spring. To fool the Army's intelligence experts, Sinnreich flooded the friendly force's sensors with information, almost all of it false. The U.S. Army still won-but only because its forces were able to hop rapidly around the massive battle zone on a "joint tilt rotorcraft," a kind of heliplane that hasn't been designed yet.

Daunting technical challenges aren't the only obstacles. Marine Corps experiments have shown that to destroy targets rapidly, low-ranking troops must have the authority to launch devastating weapons. But in Kosovo, fears of causing civilian casualties forced decisions higher up the chain, not lower down. Pilots, for instance, often had to get the approval of their commanders to bomb vehicles they thought were tanks or artillery pieces. "We will probably have to give captains and sergeants the ability to do targeting that in Kosovo the generals were doing," says Col. Gary Anderson, chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab at Quantico, Va. "The sociology of working through this is going to be as challenging as the technology."

And of course, a new Army won't come cheap. Leaders in other services have already objected to the estimated $70 billion cost of the Army's reforms over the next 10 to 20 years. Unless Congress and a new administration pump up the Pentagon's budget, that bill will soon collide with other high-profile programs such as the F-22 combat jet, the Joint Strike Fighter, and the Navy's new aircraft carrier.

Army leaders are nonplused. "This brigade combat team would have no difficulty going against an up-armored enemy in the right terrain," insists Dubik, the Transformation director. "I'd take it to Korea and dare a mechanized force to attack it. I'd use the [scout] battalion and the antitank units to set up ambushes so that armor would not have a chance." The same goes for Kosovo, he says.

Open desert, like the ground the Army fought on in the Gulf War, would be a tougher environment, since it has fewer terrain features to take advantage of. Army analysis shows that a medium-weight force would have been a more effective screen against Iraq's armored columns in 1990 than the 82d Airborne, which for several tense weeks was all that stood between the Iraqi Army and Saudi Arabia. But the new units would take heavy casualties in combat. The risk that the Army may yet have to fight a booming, Cold War-style battle is why it plans to maintain a shrinking number of armored units-which it calls "legacy forces"-until 2031.

"Miracle" weapons. The Army hopes that by the time it has built six to eight new medium-weight brigades, a brand-new, high-tech combat machine will begin to make the tank unnecessary. The "future combat system" is meant to combine the best features of an Abrams-survivability against most weapons, and heavy firepower-with the slim design and maneuverability of the interim combat vehicle. But instead of concentrating all of that on one chassis, the future combat system will probably be a network of several vehicles. A flying spy drone may gather targeting data, then transfer it to an unmanned rocket or missile launcher. A human controller may be in a third vehicle, somewhere behind the front lines, to OK all weapons launches.

Earlier this year, the Army moved up the due date of the still-theoretical system from 2025 to 2012. That would require research and development contracts to be signed by 2003-a record-setting pace by Pentagon standards. But the technological barriers are enormous, as is the attendant skepticism by veteran troopers.

Protecting combat vehicles against the kinds of armor-penetrating weapons expected in a decade will require revolutionary breakthroughs in armor technology. One concept is "active armor" that will sense when a round is fired its way, then send out sheets of flak to deflect the weapon-all within two seconds. The Army may also experiment with ceramics and other high-tech materials. But for now, physics stands in the way. Even if a 20-ton minitank were impervious to a high-speed penetrator, the impact alone could send the vehicle tumbling 500 yards downrange. "The focus of this effort is a nonexistent miracle platform, with miracle weapons that we may never see," gripes one Army officer. Which shows that before the Army defeats its next enemy, it must win over its own troops.

---

BOMBS AWAY
Taking the pilot out of the cockpit

U.S. News & World Report
Cover Story 9/18/00
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000918/tank.b.htm

The next time an enemy shoots down an American combat plane, there might be no pilot to rescue. By next spring, the Pentagon hopes to test-fly an "unmanned combat air vehicle," or UCAV, a bomb-dropping version of the pilotless spy planes that circled over Kosovo during the war there last year. If the program stays on course, such drones could be flying live missions by 2010.

But the fearless jet jock will still be a fixture for years-and that, some analysts say, is part of the problem. In a culture built upon the exploits of human warriors, machines that can do the same job-perhaps more effectively-find few supporters. The Pentagon, for instance, plans to spend nearly $70 billion on the futuristic F-22 and $200 billion or more on the "joint strike fighter." The budget for the UCAV is just $126 million.

Few dispute the high-tech wonders of the stealthy F-22 and JSF. The question is whether their snazzy features are needed these days. "Sweeping the skies is a function of sensors and munitions, not pulling G's and silk scarves," says Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "Nobody flies on a guy's tail anymore and fires 20-millimeter up his chute." Yet conventional air-to-air dogfighting is what the F-22, for example, is designed for.

First mission. Unlike the F-22 or the joint strike fighter, the first UCAV will not be especially spiffy. In maneuvers, it will only withstand three to five times the force of gravity, compared with 8 G's for today's fighters. The jet will have off-the-shelf engines, sensors, and other parts. It won't even be stealthy.

The UCAV's first mission will be to take out enemy surface-to-air missiles and other air defenses. "Controllers"-rather than pilots-will monitor as many as four UCAVs from a ground station. But they won't "fly" the planes; the UCAVs will be programmed to fly a preset flight path or to loiter over heavily defended areas such as Baghdad or Belgrade, looking for targets. "You can expose it to a level of risk that is probably unacceptable with a manned aircraft," says Lt. Col. Mike Leahy of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon's future-weapons shop.

The UCAV would outperform manned fighters in other important ways, though. Without a pilot, a UCAV would require far less protective gear, avionics, and other pilot-support systems. That would make the cost about one third that of a JSF's $50 million price. Since pilots wouldn't need to train, the jets would fly infrequently, reducing maintenance costs by up to 80 percent. Future UCAVs could perform maneuvers, such as 18-G turns, that human pilots simply cannot withstand.

If the UCAV succeeds in its early missions, the Pentagon could use it to patrol the skies over Iraq or other no-fly zones. Before long, it may be able to fill much of the joint strike fighter's role. That might make it a logical alternative to the high-priced JSF, right? Responds one Air Force official: "We're not going to dance with that elephant." -R.J.N.

---

Abrams M1A2 Tank

goarmy.com
http://www.goarmy.com/tour/adv/tank.htm

The Abrams M1A2 tank provides heavy armor superiority on the battlefield. It closes with and destroys enemy forces on the integrated battlefield using mobility, firepower, and shock effect. The 120mm main gun, combined with the powerful 1,500 hp turbine engine and special armor, make the Abrams tank particularly suitable for attacking or defending against large concentrations of heavy armor forces in a highly lethal battlefield. The M1A2 System Enhancement Program provides the Abrams tank the ability to use the Army. s common Command and Control software enabling rapid transfer of digital situational data and overlays. The Abrams foreign counterparts include France. s Leclerc, Germany. s Leopard 2, Israel. s Merkava Mk.3, Russia. s T-64, 72 & 80, and Britain. s Challenger 2.

---

USA Today
09/17/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Georgia

Quitman - The Army has changed its mind and will give J.C. Slaughter an honorable discharge. Slaughter received a less than honorable discharge from the Army, was court-martialed and imprisoned in 1946 because he refused an officer's orders. On the Italian front in World War II, he was wounded by a mortar and spent three months in a hospital. His leg hadn't healed when he returned to his unit's field kitchen, and he refused when an officer told him to go to the front lines instead. "I told him I wasn't able to make it, that my leg wouldn't hold up," Slaughter says. The Army says it will upgrade his discharge to honorable, making him eligible for veteran's benefits.

Idaho

Sandpoint - The Army Corps of Engineers has started drawing down Lake Pend Oreille for the winter, but how far down depends on the success of a federal lawsuit filed by the Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club. The group contends drawing down the Panhandle lake as far as planned could ruin the kokanee salmon fishery. And that could hurt the drainage's federally protected bull trout, which depend on kokanee as a food source.

Mississippi

Biloxi - A bail bondsman was fined $2,500 after pleading guilty to falsifying records to get a Purple Heart car tag. Donald Dick, who uses the last name Bear and owns Bear Bonding in Gulfport, was also sentenced to probation. Dick admitted in federal court that he gave a fake U.S. Air Force discharge form to the Jackson County Chancery Clerk's Office.

New Mexico

White Sands Missile Range - A U.S. Army missile performed as designed, dropping 300 "bomblets" on a target 80 miles away from liftoff. Jim Eckles, spokesman for the White Sands Missile Range, said the firing was a test of military missile storage techniques. Missiles have a "shelf life" of about 10 years, so the Army periodically test-fires missiles "to make sure storage is not having an effect on them," he said.

Virginia

Norfolk - An internal report says Navy mechanics nationwide are stripping parts from some new jets to keep older planes flying. The report found few problems with aircraft deployed overseas, but says some in the USA are "on the ragged edge" of safety margins. That has crushed the morale of air crews and mechanics.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

USA Today
09/17/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New York

Madison - The seven-turbine, 11.5-megawatt Madison Wind Project will begin churning power today from its three towering windmills in central New York. It is the state's largest wind-power generating facility and the first wind farm east of the Mississippi to sell to commercial and industrial customers. The turbines produce enough electricity for 10,000 households. ...

-------- environment

USA Today
09/17/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Maryland

Annapolis - The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is seeking more than 1,000 documents from the state for use in a suit against the federal government. The environmental group has asked a judge to force Maryland to turn over the documents. The group is suing the federal government, alleging it has not enforced clean water standards in more than 300 polluted waterways.

Oklahoma

Cardin - Residents are unhappy with the idea of moving this town two miles to get away from mining contaminants. About 75 of the 126 residents say they don't want to move. Cardin and another town nearby, Picher, are located in the middle of a former lead and zinc mining region, and the idea of relocation was mentioned instead of spending money on cleanup. Picher residents are also divided about moving.

Oregon

Portland - In a state that prides itself on its recycling efforts, about seven of 10 discarded tires each year end up in a landfill, the state Department of Environmental Quality said. But nationally, seven of 10 tires are either recycled or burned for energy. Oregonians generate about 3 million tires a year.

Utah

Salt Lake City - Dentists, nurses and mothers say poor children have bad dental health because of the state's lack of fluoridated water. On Nov. 7, voters in Salt Lake County, Davis County and Logan will decide whether to fluoridate the water. Residents of Smithfield, Providence, Nibley and Hyrum will cast nonbinding votes. About 62% of Americans have fluoridated water; 3% of Utah residents drink fluoridated water.

-------- imf / world bank

Rich Nations Pledge to Double Countries Getting Debt Relief

New York Times
September 17, 2000
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/world/17BANK.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - In an era of unprecedented prosperity for rich nations, their financial leaders are promising a high-profile campaign to double the number of poor nations granted debt relief by year's end.

The commitment would mean easing the conditions usually imposed on countries that want debt forgiven, international financial officials said.

The pledge, to be announced at the annual meeting of international lending agencies in Prague next week, is intended to defuse one of the most potent arguments of the antiglobalization protesters who have disrupted nearly every recent gathering of finance and trade ministers: In times of previously unknown wealth, many of the poorest nations have become increasingly indebted to the rich.

The drive to relieve more debt by year's end, pushed primarily by ministers from Europe, where debt relief has become a major political issue, indicates how finance ministers and the heads of lending agencies are shifting their priorities.

Just last year, financial officials were still scrambling to prevent a panic that had engulfed many emerging markets from setting off a global recession. This year, they plan to endorse an array of new antipoverty programs, allocating funds to fight AIDS and spread education, as well as wipe away old debts incurred by the poorest nations in Africa and Latin America.

The focus on poverty is possible, in part, because the world has rarely enjoyed better economic health.

The International Monetary Fund, which will release its yearly global economic survey next week, predicts that the world economy will grow by 4.7 percent this year, faster than at any time since at least the late 1980's and, by some measures, since the 1960's, when half the world still had closed economies.

Of all the leading developed and developing countries, only Japan has yet to show robust expansion in a fully globalized age.

Under the plan to speed up debt relief, finance ministers will streamline cumbersome procedures so that 10 nations, all but one in Africa, can begin to use about $17.5 billion that they would have had to set aside for debt payments this year.

Unless world leaders had agreed to ease some conditions, they might have fallen well short of their own pledge - first made at a global summit meeting in Cologne, Germany, in the summer of 1999 - to forgive the debts of at least 20 nations by 2000.

"We agreed that we have to take this to the limit," said James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank. "If we wait to have all the i's dotted and t's crossed, we would not make the goal. This has assumed extraordinary proportions as a political matter, and we just have to get it done."

Mr. Wolfensohn and other officials said global lenders would continue to insist that nations that want their debts forgiven come up with a strategy for using the liberated funds effectively - ideally for education, health and fighting poverty.

Under heavy United States pressure, lending agencies have mandated that debt-relief candidates produce complex antipoverty blueprints that include plans for schools, health programs and rural development. They must also detail roles for the private sector and charity groups, as well as the government.

The requirement was envisioned as a way to ensure that money is not diverted to useless or even corrupt purposes.

But the efforts to comply often take many months or even years and cost applicants scarce resources to develop. A few nations have withdrawn or have threatened to withdraw their applications in frustration.

Now, the lending agencies say, they will start granting at least some debt relief when a nation produces a far less rigorous interim strategy, with full relief granted later when the more comprehensive plan is finished.

The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other major lending agencies have also agreed to relax requirements that nations prove they know how to use development aid - for example, by performing well in an ongoing, official lending program over several years - before they can receive debt relief. Under the expedited program, that requirement will become more flexible, officials said.

Officials believe that the changes will make it possible to finish work on at least 10 of 14 applications for debt relief in just three months, a much faster pace than the lending agencies have maintained to date.

Ten nations have already received debt relief under the longer, more rigorous procedures in place.

Among those in a new batch considered likely to have some debt forgiven by year's end are Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Guinea, Guyana, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Nicaragua, Rwanda and Zambia.

The World Bank also plans to announce in Prague that it will establish a new, multibillion-dollar fund that will provide low-interest loans to nations to help them put antipoverty strategies into practice, bank officials said.

The idea is that some of the strings attached to debt relief in the past could be fastened instead to new loans, giving the lending agencies a continued oversight role without hindering debt forgiveness.

The renewed commitment to debt relief is a significant victory for a coalition of religious, charity and pressure groups worldwide that helped put debt relief on the world agenda several years ago.

Many have sharply criticized financial leaders for a go-slow approach since then.

About 20,000 demonstrators are expected to turn out in Prague for the annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which begins with low- key meetings this week and formally kicks off its session next weekend.

Organizers fear that members of a radical youth underground movement in Europe will converge on Prague and pose a major crowd- control challenge for relatively inexperienced Czech police. As in previous antiglobalization protests in Washington, Seattle and Cologne, Jubilee 2000, an umbrella organization of debt-relief advocates that stages nonviolent protest, also plans to march.

Many of the protesters have argued that globalization tends to benefit multinational interests at the expense of the poor. They see the heavy debts of developing nations as a case in point.

The critics claim that lending agencies provide billions in loans while demanding that nations quickly adopt capitalist ways like trade liberalization, free flow of capital, austere government budgets.

But the experiment often fails, they say, leaving the poor even poorer because, like gamblers on credit, they end up with a hangover of high interest payments.

The lending agencies - and most of the wealthy nations that fill their coffers - do not agree with that analysis.

But, led by a dramatic shift of sentiment in Europe, where the Jubilee 2000 coalition has heavyweight political power, the lending agencies have embraced sweeping debt relief as a way to help poor nations cope with globalization.

Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer and the current head of the committee of nations that sets broad policy goals for the lending agencies, has been a champion of debt relief, bank and fund officials said. He has insisted that the agencies meet their Cologne goal of 20 nations by 2000, even though that means easing some conditions.

Mr. Brown's emphasis on accelerated debt forgiveness is at odds with the position of Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers. Though Mr. Summers also favors debt relief, he has insisted that poor nations fully develop their strategies for using the money well, even at the cost of denying early relief to some of them.

Domestic politics also plays a role. The Republican-controlled Congress has been far warier of debt relief than parliaments in Europe. Though the Clinton administration is hopeful that Congress will eventually agree to provide $435 million for the United States' share of debt relief this year, early House commitments to debt relief fall short of that mark, and the Senate has allocated only a small fraction of the money requested.

Mr. Summers has said he fears a significant backlash against debt relief in Congress if the relief is doled out willy-nilly, or if a nation that gets debt relief is then found to have used the money for corrupt purposes.

A senior administration official said Friday that the Treasury Department had approved the lending agencies' expedited approach to debt relief. But the official played down the matter as largely "window dressing" designed to placate protesters, not completely overhaul the debt relief process. He said the United States would not allow nations to pass through the debt-relief process unless they commit to approved poverty-reduction strategies.

-------- police

Now that's a model prisoner

USA Today
09/17/00
Slightly Off Center...
http://usatoday.com/news/nweird.htm

WENATCHEE, Wash. - Inmate 88712 was a model prisoner. For nearly five years, he caused no trouble, ate no food and never slept in a bed. And he earned the Chelan County Regional Jail thousands of dollars. That's because inmate 88712 and four others existed only on paper for most of their time behind bars. The five inmates were released after just a few days, but a booking error meant the jail's computer never noticed. The jail billed the city of East Wenatchee for years, a sum that amounted to $134,772, officials said. The jail will refund the money by crediting $6,126 a month for 22 months to the city's jail bill starting next month.

-------- spying

Investigation of Ex-Chief of the C.I.A. Is Broadened

New York Times
September 17, 2000
By NEIL A. LEWIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/national/17CIA.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 - John M. Deutch, who is under investigation by the Justice Department for admitted computer security violations when he was the director of central intelligence, may have committed the same kind of security breaches years earlier when he was a senior official at the Pentagon, according to government investigators and several confidential Defense Department documents.

In addition, the documents suggest a behind-the-scenes debate in the Defense Department over whether Mr. Deutch should have been stripped of a security clearance that allowed him to continue to work on defense- related issues for government contractors since leaving office at the end of President Clinton's first term. Mr. Deutch voluntarily relinquished the clearance in February.

The documents, provided to The New York Times by government investigators, said that during his tenure as an undersecretary of defense and then in the Pentagon's No. 2 post as deputy secretary of defense in the early years of the Clinton administration, Mr. Deutch "routinely entered data on government-owned computers at his office and home not designated to process classified information."

The report added that, "Dr. Deutch maintained a daily journal containing classified information that was almost 1,000 pages in length, on computer memory cards, that he reportedly transported in his shirt pocket."

The documents say that like the security breaches for which he was stripped of his security clearance by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon information he downloaded at home was on computers that he and his family also used for routine Internet use. As a result, one of the Defense Department documents says, "Dr. Deutch's practice of using computers in this manner was extremely risky in that a computer `hacker' could have gained online access to Dr. Deutch's computer and the information stored in temporary files on the hard drive, including the journal."

Pentagon documents also show that while he served as the deputy secretary in 1994 and 1995, he declined department requests that "he allow security systems to be installed in his residence" in Bethesda, Md.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican and member of the Judiciary Committee, said today that, "It appears that Mr. Deutch not only left his fingerprints on downloaded classified information at the C.I.A. but he also left his droppings at the Defense Department. This is a troubling pattern and begs a thorough investigation."

A special prosecutor at the Justice Department has told associates that he will probably recommend that Mr. Deutch be prosecuted for security violations, law enforcement officials said. The prosecutor, Paul E. Coffey, was called out of retirement by Attorney General Janet Reno to examine the seriousness of the security violations at the C.I.A. But he has since expanded the scope of the inquiry into Mr. Deutch's behavior at the Defense Department. The broadening of the investigation into the Deutch tenure at the Pentagon was first reported in Saturday's editions of The Washington Post.

Mr. Deutch was director of central intelligence from May 1995 until he resigned in December 1996. As he was leaving, a C.I.A. computer security official found that Mr. Deutch had stored information at his home, including details of covert operations.

Pentagon documents show that after the initial investigation of his actions became public, some defense officials argued over whether Mr. Deutch was being given special treatment, especially over the decision to allow him to retain what officials have called "an industrial clearance."

An e-mail from Christopher Mellon, a senior official in the defense secretary's office, dated Feb. 3, 2000, to the head of Pentagon security, Richard Williams, asks that Mr. Williams check with other officials. It then goes on to say, "They will confirm that I was the most ardent advocate for treating Deutch like anyone else and was told to stand down by the front office."

An e-mail from Mr. Williams to a senior official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, dated Feb. 7, says that he had recommended beginning the procedure to revoke Mr. Deutch's clearance, but that "this process was stopped above my level."

Mr. Deutch's lawyer, Terrence O'Donnell, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

The report shows that investigators diligently tracked down the seven computers they had concluded Mr. Deutch used while at the Pentagon. Some of the computers were found at Florida A & M University, a Mennonite school in Pennsylvania and at a computer store in Crofton, Md.

-------- terrorism

U.S. acquires reputed terrorism guide

USA Today
9/17/00- Updated 10:11 PM ET
By Jack Kelley, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwssun07.htm

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies have obtained computer-disk copies of a six-volume manual that was used by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden to train recruits at his terrorist camps in Afghanistan, USA TODAY has learned.

The 1,000-page manual, called the Encyclopedia and written in Arabic, contains information on how to recruit followers, conduct terrorist operations and assemble bombs similar to those that destroyed U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing more than 200 people, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials.

A U.S. federal court has indicted bin Laden, who lives in Afghanistan, in connection with the embassy attacks. He denies any involvement.

Spokesmen for the CIA and FBI declined comment, but other intelligence officials call the manual a "gold mine" of information on bin Laden's tactics. They say they hope to use it to help slow or disrupt terrorist operations overseas.

"That manual is a briefing book on 'how to conduct terror' and is no different than what (militant Islamic groups) Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran would use," says Ken Katzman, a terrorism analyst at the Congressional Research Service, the investigative arm of Congress.

The manual in CD-Rom form was recently given to the CIA and the FBI's Washington headquarters by Jordanian intelligence officials.

They seized it from one of 16 men arrested in Jordan last December for allegedly planning attacks in Israel and Jordan for New Year's.

Lt. Ziad Hajaya, a computer expert at the Jordanian General Intelligence Department, told a closed military court in Amman, Jordan, last year that one of the seized disks included information on "explosives and manufacturing explosives, toxic and heavy weaponry," according to court documents obtained by USA TODAY.

U.S. officials say they have "positively confirmed" it was distributed by bin Laden in his terrorist camps along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan.


-------- activists

Farm Aid cause continues with weekend events, concert

Yahoo News
Friday September 15
REUTERS
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000915/en/music-farmaid_1.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of farmers struggling with some of the lowest crop prices in two decades will gather near the nation's capital this weekend for the 15th annual Farm Aid concert, a now familiar event hosted by musicians Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp.

Sunday's concert in the Virginia countryside is the highlight of a weekend of growers' meetings with lawmakers and White House campaign figures such as Tipper Gore, Ralph Nader (news - web sites) and Pat Buchanan (news - web sites).

Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore (news - web sites), plans to accompany Nelson on stage, playing the drums, event organizers said.

Professional acts will include Barenaked Ladies, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Alan Jackson, Arlo Guthrie and Mellencamp in a marathon concert to be broadcast on the Country Music Television cable outlet. The concert, in Bristow, Va., starts at 2 p.m. and is expected to last until about 10 p.m.

Since its inception in 1985, Farm Aid has raised more than $15 million in donations to more than 100 farm organizations, churches and service agencies in 44 states.

The concert's special 15th anniversary status led organizers to commemorate the milestone by issuing a double-CD of music compiled from the shows.

---

Farm Aid Cause Continues with Sunday Concert

Yahoo News
Sunday September 17 6:14 PM ET updated 6:14 PM ET Sep 17
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000917/re/music_farmaid_dc_2.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thousands of farmers struggling with some of the lowest crop prices in two decades gathered near the nation's capital this weekend for the 15th annual Farm Aid concert, a now familiar event hosted by musicians Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp.

Barenaked Ladies, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Alan Jackson, Arlo Guthrie and Travis Tritt were among the artists booked for the marathon concert in the Virginia countryside.

The concert, in Bristow, Va., was scheduled to start at 2 p.m. and last until about 10 p.m.

Sunday's concert was the highlight of a weekend of growers' meetings with lawmakers and White House campaign figures such as Tipper Gore, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan.

Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore (news - web sites), planned to accompany Nelson on stage, playing the drums, event organizers said.

Since its inception in 1985, Farm Aid has raised more than $15 million in donations to more than 100 farm organizations, churches and service agencies in 44 states.

The concert's special 15th anniversary status led organizers to commemorate the milestone by issuing a double-CD of music compiled from the shows.

----------

Gandhi Likeness Unveiled by Clinton

Washington Post
Sunday , September 17, 2000 ; C08
By Bill Broadway Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21955-2000Sep17.html

Washington's newest statue, a larger-than-life figure of Mahatma Gandhi, was officially dedicated yesterday by President Clinton and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in a small park across from the Indian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue NW.

The ceremony was short, about 10 minutes, and quiet. There were no microphones, no musical fanfares, no speeches. But the symbolism was strong as Clinton and Vajpayee, who conferred last week on nuclear arms testing and religious and political conflict in South Asia, threw rose petals at the feet of the man whose name has become synonymous with civil disobedience.

"It's very important for the United States to make a memorial to Gandhi," Clinton said after the dedication. "Gandhi provided the inspiration to Martin Luther King, which spread to the civil rights movement and brought an end to the business of slavery and brought integrity to the democratic ideal."

The statue, just under nine feet tall, stands on a 16-ton block of rough-hewn granite from India. It shows a lean, bespectacled Gandhi in full stride, pushing forward against a walking stick in a scene recalling his 1930 march to the sea to protest an increased salt tax by the British.

The robed, sandaled figure faces north, toward the British Embassy about a mile away. The inscription below it is spare: "My Life Is My Message."

The president said that last week's visit by the prime minister enhanced the relationship between their countries and that he hopes "this chain in partnership goes beyond my service into a whole new era of U.S-India relations."

No other country "has been more influenced by India than the United States," said Clinton, who learned about Gandhi at 17 or 18 through King's writings about nonviolent resistance.

In 1947, India gained its independence, largely as a result of Gandhi's success in uniting millions of people across India in a mass movement of civil disobedience. Assassinated the next year, the spiritual and political leader remains a symbol of hope in India and for Indians who have immigrated to other countries.

To have Gandhi's statue on Washington's Embassy Row is "a dream come true," said Achamma Chandersekaran, who conceived of the idea 13 years ago and chaired a coalition to create a national memorial. She said it is natural that Gandhi be honored here, both because of his desire for peace and unity among all people and because he was so influenced by two American writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

The small, triangular park on Massachusetts Avenue at 21st Street NW is owned by the federal government. Congress passed a bill, which Clinton signed last year, authorizing the government of India to create a memorial garden. The Commission of Fine Arts approved the design and inscriptions last February.

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), a sponsor of the bill, said it was appropriate that Gandhi's be added to the dozens of other statues of great leaders in Washington. "Mahatma Gandhi was one of the great spiritual and inspirational leaders," said Pallone, whose central New Jersey district has what he said may be the largest Indian American constituency of any, 30,000 to 40,000.

An estimated 40,000 to 50,000 Indians live in the Washington region.

Embassy officials would not reveal the cost of the statue, which was sculpted by Gautam Pal of Calcutta and donated by the Indian government. But Indian Americans, some contributing up to $10,000, paid $250,000 to cover the cost of the pedestal, landscaping and marble plaques with sayings from Gandhi, including: "Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?"

Other statues of Gandhi have been erected at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta and in several other cities, including New York, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Houston and St. Louis.

-------

NucNews - Please circulate -- help educate! - http://prop1.org

1. FYI - RESPONSE TO 9/14 JOHN GLENN COMMENTARY ON USA TODAY SERIES
From: df7332@aol.com

2. Allies Deliberately Poisoned Iraq
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

3. The Bureau of Atomic Tourism
From: Steve Wagner <hanforddownwinder@yahoo.com>

------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: df7332@aol.com

FYI - RESPONSE TO 9/14 JOHN GLENN COMMENTARY ON USA TODAY SERIES

To All:

I forwarded a copy of <John Glenn commentary on USA Today series> to James Rauch, F.A.C.T.S. (For A Clean Tonawanda Site), Inc. Technical Analyst. Here is his reply (following original message below by Glenn). Jim also e-mailed <editor@poweronline.com>.

IMPORTANT: See <NOTE> at end.

http://www.poweronline.com/content/news/article.asp?DocID=3D{7FAF6181-8A23-= 11D4-8C60-009027DE0829}&Bucket=3DHomeFeaturedArticles&VNETCOOKIE=3DNO

Electron Cafe by John Glenn: Accurate but misleading
9/14/2000

USA Today just ran a series of articles about the hazardous working conditions at facilities that processed raw materials of the United States nuclear weapons programs in the 1940s and 1950s. The articles paint a picture of workers who were exposed to hazards uniquely related to the nuclear program.

Since there is good evidence that air concentrations of uranium dust in these facilities was as high as a few hundred times acceptable limits, viewed in hindsight these workers are seen as victims. USA Today suggests that Congress should provide compensation to these workers who took risks to support the nation's security.

The article correctly identified the contradiction in a national policy that proposes that compensation be paid to government and national lab workers who received far less exposure to radiation than these commercial workers.

[I questioned in earlier columns whether nuclear workers, on average, should be classed as victims. As victims, they have been paid better than the average American, have had interesting and worthwhile jobs and on average have lived longer and in better health than the average American.]

The article missed the more glaring truth that the mineral extraction industry is hundreds of times more hazardous than is tolerated in the regulated nuclear industry. This is equivalent to worrying about a Chihuahua that nips at your ankles while the 500-pound gorilla in the corner of the room is hardly noticed.

The most glaring deficiency at these work sites was the lack of good measurements of exposure of workers. USA Today quoted Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) personnel who expressed concern and wanted to monitor the levels of uranium inhaled or ingested by workers. At that time, the AEC was both weapons builder and safety regulator.

This conflict of interest was remedied with the creation of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1975. The companies did not want active monitoring because that might alarm the workers. What was not stressed was that these facilities were following the industry standards that prevailed in the mineral extraction industry at that time.

The companies selected to refine uranium ore for the AEC were chosen because they already were processing the same or similar ores. They were just asked to process more and in some cases process a grade of ore that contained higher than usual concentrations of uranium.

Because there is not good data confirming levels of uranium actually taken into the bodies of the workers, the high concentrations in air discussed in the article may or may not have resulted in the very high radiation doses discussed in the articles. If dust particles are not the right size, they will not make it into the lungs and be deposited there. Good evaluations ideally would have measured concentrations, particle size distributions and bioassay measurements of actual body burdens. I would have appreciated actual numbers so that I could independently estimate exposures. However, I do not think that very many other readers cared about that omission.

The situation is better today in the mineral extraction industry. Monitoring for toxic metals and control of breathing zone concentrations using ventilation or masks is standard. However, a double standard still exists with respect to naturally radioactive ores.

Processors that handle ores with a concentration of uranium or thorium above 0.05% by weight during processing are subject to immensely more controls than a similar operation that just manages to stay below that concentration. I understand that 0.05% was originally chosen because ores below that concentration were not considered to be financially viable for extraction of uranium or thorium. But ores used to extract other minerals such as zeolites, niobium, tantalum and tungsten may have concentrations of uranium or thorium that are quite close to 0.05%.

The contrast in regulatory oversight is most apparent with respect to waste piles generated in mineral extraction. Above 0.05% the processor must be licensed by the NRC or an Agreement State. NRC licensed dirt plies containing as little as 0.001% of uranium and thorium must be treated as waste and/or the site must meet the stringent license termination criteria adopted by NRC.

Although I abhor double standards, this is an area where we either accept a double standard or dramatically relax the safety standards for the entire nuclear industry. The exposure of members of the public to uranium, thorium and others (including radon gas) from the soil in their own backyard exceeds federal standards for public exposure by a factor of 2 to 3 and NRC license termination criteria by a factor of 8 to 12.

Many mineral tailings will have uranium/thorium concentrations several times higher than the average backyard. USA Today did not see through to the less obvious fact that the hazard in mineral extraction is not due to the nuclear programs, but to the toxic earth itself.

To respond to this column or to contact the author, please send an e-mail to editor@poweronline.com.

RESPONSE TO 9/14 JOHN GLENN COMMENTARY ON USA TODAY SERIES

John Glenn:

Your statement that "exposure of members of the public to uranium, thorium and others (including radon gas) from soil in their own backyards exceeds federal standards for public exposure by a factor of 2 to 3 and NRC license termination criteria by a factor of 8 to 12" is largely incorrect except at a few unusual locations.

While there are a few localized areas on the earth's surface where your statement is true, most of the earth's surface has naturally occurring surface soil concentrations of uranium at levels below 5 picoCuries per gram (pCi/g). For example, the respective background concentrations of U-238, Th-230, and Ra-226 as reported by the Dept. of Energy for the Linde site in Tonawanda, NY were 3.1, 1.4, and 1.1 pCi/g.

Such levels are below even the most stringent historic NRC license termination criteria applicable to such materials: NRC's 1981 "Branch Technical Position on Disposal or Onsite Storage of Thorium or Uranium >From Past Operations", [46 FR 52061]. The most stringent criterion in this policy prescibes a 10 pCi/g total uranium soil cleanup level (about 5 pCi/g U-238) for free release of contaminated properties.

More important, such levels are well below the 600 pCi/g total uranium and the 15 pCi/g Ra-226 cleanup levels currently being implemented by the Army Corps of Engineers at the Linde site. Therefore, future users of this site will face exposure to many times the concentrations of these radioactive materials actually present in their own backyards.

The major reason most of the FUSRAP (Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program) sites discussed in the USA Today series have not been properly managed is that, despite a 1978 Congressional law specifically requiring such regulation, the NRC subsequently failed to regulate uranium wastes generated prior to 1978.

The NRC continues to ignore this responsibility despite affected citizens' petitions and even an unfavorable federal court decision. In a March 8, 2000 letter responding to the following query by Senator Robert F. Bennett: "Would you agree that the decision in Kerr-McGee v. NRC (903 F.2d 1. D.C. Cir. 1990) supports NRC regulating all FUSRAP waste?", current NRC Chairman Richard Meserve responded: "Yes. I believe the decision in Kerr-McGee v. NRC does tend to support the NRC regulation of pre-1978 FUSRAP waste."

NOTE:

For a more detailed discussion of the Army's "cleanup" at the Tonawanda, NY site please see: <http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~cb955>.

Sincerely,

James Rauch technical analyst F.A.C.T.S. (For A Clean Tonawanda Site), Inc.

-------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

Allies Deliberately Poisoned Iraq

Y'all, War is "Hell" and is never civilized... so the international community decided some aspects just should not be undertaken. And set up the Geneva Convention.

"The US-led allied forces deliberately destroyed Iraq's water supply during the Gulf War, flagrantly breaking the Geneva Convention and causing thousands of civilian deaths"

We are an "Outlaw Nation".. a FASCIST NATION. Given that..... do you think the Dragon's care about compensating YOU! Think Again!!! YOU are just Collateral Damage.

Later http://www.sundayherald.com/news/newsi.hts?section=News&story_id=11209

--------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: Steve Wagner <hanforddownwinder@yahoo.com>

The Bureau of Atomic Tourism
<http://www.atomictourist.com/>

This travel guide fills a very specific niche, offering travel information on "tourist locations around the world that have either been the site of atomic explosions, display exhibits on the development of atomic devices, or contain vehicles that were designed to deliver atomic weapons." These are divided into two categories: Atomic Museums and Sites of Atomic Explosions. Even those not specifically planning an Atomo-centric getaway may find numerous items of interest. For instance, on reviewing the site, I discovered that Bikini Atoll is now considered one of the world's foremost dive destinations, with its ghost fleet of ships sunk in A- and H-Bomb tests. Descriptions of each location include an overview, what you'll see, public tours dates and times, and how to get there. Links to official and/or related sites are also provided.

---------------------------------------------------------]

DOEWatch List ----A Magnum-Opus Project
Subscribe online: http://www.onelist.com
DOEWatch page: http://members.aol.com/doewatch

1. Re: Pour connaître ses ennemis. Les Ecologistes pour le nucléaire. En anglais. Good to know his foes. Ecologists for nuclear power
From: "Paula Elofson-Gardine, Exec. Dir." <pelofson1@home.com>

2. FYI - RESPONSE TO 9/14 JOHN GLENN COMMENTARY ON USA TODAY SERIES
From: df7332@aol.com

3. New Study Indicates Brain Damage To Gulf War Veterans
From: magnu96196@aol.com

----------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: "Paula Elofson-Gardine, Exec. Dir." <pelofson1@home.com>

Subject: Re: Pour connaître ses ennemis. Les Ecologistes pour le nucléaire. En anglais. Good to know his foes. Ecologists for nuclear power

This is frankly unbelieveable. What a tremendous example of what we call a "WISE USE" group - someone started by or funded by the industry as "cheerleaders" to support the corporate agenda, while giving the appearance to be bona fide or true environmentalists.

These people have to be nuclear establishment employees, lobbyists, or totally ignorant back woods types that know nothing about the problems associated with long-lived environmental pollution and by product waste problems associated with these operations.

Subject: EFN - James LOVELOCK's introduction to the book "Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy" Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 17:37:11 +0000 From: EFN <EFN@ecolo.org> Organization: Environmentalists FOR Nuclear Energy

Dear friends of clean nuclear energy,

We have very good news for you today : you probably have heard already about James LOVELOCK through the TV and media.

He is one of the (if not THE) most famous environmentalist in the world.

We exchanged some correspondance with James Lovelock over the last few months, and informed him in detail about the work of EFN, and he has now joyfully accepted to join EFN, and to write a preface to my book "Environmentalists FOR Nuclear Energy" (a bestseller in France, english edition in print).

The text of this preface is communicated below. We will let you know, in a few weeks, when the printed edition of the book will be available. It will be possible to order it via the internet.

Given the mythical, symbolical and historical importance of LOVELOCK's work in the development of the environmental consciousness around the world since the 1960's, his support to our work is, in my opinion, a very important step forward.

Even before James Lovelock's preface and support, EFN has been growing rapidly as an increasing number of people and environmentalists all around the world understand the need and the importance of clean nuclear energy to protect our environment.

James LOVELOCK has always been in favor of clean nuclear energy, but he now accepts to say so publicly, and to support EFN, and I think that this is the symbol of, and that it will contribute to, a major shift which is starting to happen in the attitude of environmental movements towards nuclear energy.

The greatest, the n°1 environmentalist on the planet now does not hesitate to be

openly in favor of clean civil nuclear energy !

For those who aren't too familiar yet with Lovelock's books, we would recommend reading "Gaia, a new look at life on earth" or "The Gaia theory" or "The Ages of Gaia".

With best regards,
Bruno Comby

President of ENVIRONMENTALISTS FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY (EFN)
http://www.ecolo.org

Preface for the English edition of Bruno Comby's book :

"ENVIRONMENTALISTS FOR NUCLEAR ENERGY"
(in print)
by James LOVELOCK

Short summary of Lovelock's biography : independent environmentalist, author and scientific researcher, Doctor Honoris Causa of several universities throughout the world, he is considered since several decades as a founder of the worldwide environmental movement in the 1960's ; he is one of the main ideological leaders, if not the main one, in the history of the development of environmental awareness. James Lovelock is still today one of the main authors in the environmental field. He is the author of " The GaiaTheory ", and " The Ages of Gaia ", which consider the planet Earth as a self-regulated living being.

I spent my childhood in the English countryside over 70 years ago where we lived a simple life without telephones or electricity. Horses were still a normal source of power and we hardly imagined radio and television. One thing I remember well was how superstitious we all were and how tangible was the concept of evil. Men and women who in other ways were intelligent, fearfully avoided places said to be haunted, and they would suffer inconvenience rather than travel on Fridays that were the 13th day of the month. Their irrational fears fed on ignorance and were quite common. I cannot help thinking that they persist, but now these fears are about the products of science. This is particularly true of nuclear power plants that seem to stir the dread that in the past was felt about a moonlit graveyard thought to be infested with werewolves and vampires.

The fear of nuclear energy is understandable through its association in the mind with the horrors of nuclear warfare, but it is unjustified; nuclear power plants are not bombs. What at first was a proper concern for safety has become a near pathological anxiety and much of the blame for this goes to the news media, the television and film industries, and fiction writers. All these have used the fear of things nuclear as a reliable prop to sell their wares. They, and the political disinformers who sought to discredit the nuclear industry as potential enemies, have been so successful at frightening the public that it is now impossible in many nations to propose a new nuclear power plant.

No source of power is entirely safe, even windmills are not free of fatal accidents, and Bruno Comby's fine book gives a true and balanced account of the great benefits and small risks of nuclear power. I wholeheartedly agree with him and I want to put it to you that the dangers of continuing to burn fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) as our main energy source are far greater and they threaten not just individuals but civilization itself. Much of the first world behaves like an addicted smoker: we are so used to burning fossil fuels for our needs that we ignore their insidious long-term dangers.

Polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has no immediate consequences, but continued pollution leads to climate changes whose effects are only apparent when it is almost too late for a cure. Carbon dioxide poisons the environment just as salt can poison us. No harm comes from a modest intake, but a daily diet with too much salt can cause a lethal quantity to accumulate in the body.

We need to distinguish between things that are directly harmful to people, and things that harm indirectly by damaging our habitat the Earth.

Bubonic plague in the Middle Ages was directly harmful, caused immense personal agony and killed thirty percent of Europeans, but it was a small threat to civilization and of no consequence for the Earth itself. The burning of carbon fuels and the conversion of natural ecosystems to farmland cause no immediate harm to people but slowly impair the Earth's capacity to self-regulate and sustain, as it has always done, a planet fit for life. Although nothing we do will destroy life on Earth, we could change the environment to a point where civilization is threatened.

Sometime in this or the next century we may see this happen because of climate change and a rise in the level of the sea. If we go on burning fossil fuel at the present rate, or at an increasing rate, it is probable that all of the cities of the world now at sea level will beflooded. Try to imagine the social consequences of hundreds of millions of homeless refugees seeking dry land on which to live. In the turmoil, they may look back and wonder how humans could have been so foolish as to bring so much misery upon themselves by the thoughtless burning of carbon fuels. They may then reflect regretfully that they could have avoided their miseries by the safe benefice of nuclear energy.

Nuclear power, although potentially harmful to people, is a negligible danger to the planet. Natural ecosystems can stand levels of continuous radiation that would be intolerable in a city. The land around the failed Chernobyl power station was evacuated because its high radiation intensity made it unsafe for people, but this radioactive land is now rich in wildlife, much more so than neighboring populated areas. We call the ash from nuclear power nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it an an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places of the Earth. Who would dare cut down a forest in which was the storage place of nuclear ash?

Such is the extent of nuclear anxiety that even scientists seem to forget our planet's radioactive history. It seems almost certain that a supernova event occurred close in time and space to the origin of our solar system.

A supernova is the explosion of a large star. Astrophysicists speculate that this fate may overtake stars more than three times as large as the Sun. As a star burns - by fusion - its store of hydrogen and helium, the ashes of the fire accumulate at the centre, in the form of heavier elements like silicon and iron.

If this core of dead elements, which are no longer able to generate heat and pressure, should much exceed the mass of our own sun then the inexorable force of its own weight will cause its collapse in a matter of seconds to a body no larger than 18 miles (30 kilometers) in diameter but still as heavy as a star. We have here, in the death throes of a large star, all the ingredients for a vast nuclear explosion. A supernovae, at its peak, produces stupendous amounts of heat, light and hard radiations, about as much as the total produced by all the other stars in the same galaxy.

Explosions are never one hundred percent efficient. When a star ends as a supernova, the nuclear explosive material, which includes uranium and plutonium, together with large amounts of iron and other burnt-out elements, scatters in space, as does the dust cloud of a hydrogen bomb test.

Perhaps the strangest thing about the Earth is that it formed from lumps of fall-out from a star-sized nuclear bomb. This is why even today there is still enough uranium left in the Earth's crust to reconstitute on a minute scale the original event.

There is no other credible explanation of the great quantity of unstable elements still present. The most primitive and old-fashioned Geiger counter will indicate that we stand on the fall-out of a vast ancient nuclear explosion.

Within our bodies, about one million atoms, rendered unstable in that event, still erupt every minute, releasing a tiny fraction of the energy stored from that fierce fire of long ago.

Life began nearly four billion years ago under conditions of radioactivity far more intense than those that trouble the minds of certain present-day environmentalists. Moreover, there was neither oxygen nor ozone in the air so that the fierce unfiltered ultra-violet radiation of the sun irradiated the surface of the Earth. We need to keep in mind the thought that these fierce energies flooded the very womb of life.

I hope that it is not too late for the world to emulate France and make nuclear power our principal source of energy. There is at present no other safe, practical and economic substitute for the dangerous practice of burning carbon fuels.

James LOVELOCK.

-------------

Message: 2
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: df7332@aol.com

FYI - RESPONSE TO 9/14 JOHN GLENN COMMENTARY ON USA TODAY SERIES

To All:

I forwarded a copy of <John Glenn commentary on USA Today series> to James Rauch, F.A.C.T.S. (For A Clean Tonawanda Site), Inc. Technical Analyst. Here is his reply (following original message below by Glenn). Jim also e-mailed <editor@poweronline.com>.

IMPORTANT: See <NOTE> at end. ---------

http://www.poweronline.com/content/news/article.asp?DocID=3D{7FAF6181-8A23-= 11D4-8C60-009027DE0829}&Bucket=3DHomeFeaturedArticles&VNETCOOKIE=3DNO

Electron Cafe by John Glenn: Accurate but misleading

9/14/2000

USA Today just ran a series of articles about the hazardous working conditions at facilities that processed raw materials of the United States nuclear weapons programs in the 1940s and 1950s. The articles paint a picture of workers who were exposed to hazards uniquely related to the nuclear program.

Since there is good evidence that air concentrations of uranium dust in these facilities was as high as a few hundred times acceptable limits, viewed in hindsight these workers are seen as victims. USA Today suggests that Congress should provide compensation to these workers who took risks to support the nation's security.

The article correctly identified the contradiction in a national policy that proposes that compensation be paid to government and national lab workers who received far less exposure to radiation than these commercial workers.

[I questioned in earlier columns whether nuclear workers, on average, should be classed as victims. As victims, they have been paid better than the average American, have had interesting and worthwhile jobs and on average have lived longer and in better health than the average American.]

The article missed the more glaring truth that the mineral extraction industry is hundreds of times more hazardous than is tolerated in the regulated nuclear industry. This is equivalent to worrying about a Chihuahua that nips at your ankles while the 500-pound gorilla in the corner of the room is hardly noticed.

The most glaring deficiency at these work sites was the lack of good measurements of exposure of workers. USA Today quoted Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) personnel who expressed concern and wanted to monitor the levels of uranium inhaled or ingested by workers. At that time, the AEC was both weapons builder and safety regulator.

This conflict of interest was remedied with the creation of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 1975. The companies did not want active monitoring because that might alarm the workers. What was not stressed was that these facilities were following the industry standards that prevailed in the mineral extraction industry at that time.

The companies selected to refine uranium ore for the AEC were chosen because they already were processing the same or similar ores. They were just asked to process more and in some cases process a grade of ore that contained higher than usual concentrations of uranium.

Because there is not good data confirming levels of uranium actually taken into the bodies of the workers, the high concentrations in air discussed in the article may or may not have resulted in the very high radiation doses discussed in the articles. If dust particles are not the right size, they will not make it into the lungs and be deposited there. Good evaluations ideally would have measured concentrations, particle size distributions and bioassay measurements of actual body burdens. I would have appreciated actual numbers so that I could independently estimate exposures. However, I do not think that very many other readers cared about that omission.

The situation is better today in the mineral extraction industry. Monitoring for toxic metals and control of breathing zone concentrations using ventilation or masks is standard. However, a double standard still exists with respect to naturally radioactive ores.

Processors that handle ores with a concentration of uranium or thorium above 0.05% by weight during processing are subject to immensely more controls than a similar operation that just manages to stay below that concentration. I understand that 0.05% was originally chosen because ores below that concentration were not considered to be financially viable for extraction of uranium or thorium. But ores used to extract other minerals such as zeolites, niobium, tantalum and tungsten may have concentrations of uranium or thorium that are quite close to 0.05%.

The contrast in regulatory oversight is most apparent with respect to waste piles generated in mineral extraction. Above 0.05% the processor must be licensed by the NRC or an Agreement State. NRC licensed dirt plies containing as little as 0.001% of uranium and thorium must be treated as waste and/or the site must meet the stringent license termination criteria adopted by NRC.

Although I abhor double standards, this is an area where we either accept a double standard or dramatically relax the safety standards for the entire nuclear industry. The exposure of members of the public to uranium, thorium and others (including radon gas) from the soil in their own backyard exceeds federal standards for public exposure by a factor of 2 to 3 and NRC license termination criteria by a factor of 8 to 12.

Many mineral tailings will have uranium/thorium concentrations several times higher than the average backyard. USA Today did not see through to the less obvious fact that the hazard in mineral extraction is not due to the nuclear programs, but to the toxic earth itself.

To respond to this column or to contact the author, please send an e-mail to editor@poweronline.com.

RESPONSE TO 9/14 JOHN GLENN COMMENTARY ON USA TODAY SERIES

John Glenn:

Your statement that "exposure of members of the public to uranium, thorium and others (including radon gas) from soil in their own backyards exceeds federal standards for public exposure by a factor of 2 to 3 and NRC license termination criteria by a factor of 8 to 12" is largely incorrect except at a few unusual locations.

While there are a few localized areas on the earth's surface where your statement is true, most of the earth's surface has naturally occurring surface soil concentrations of uranium at levels below 5 picoCuries per gram (pCi/g). For example, the respective background concentrations of U-238, Th-230, and Ra-226 as reported by the Dept. of Energy for the Linde site in Tonawanda, NY were 3.1, 1.4, and 1.1 pCi/g.

Such levels are below even the most stringent historic NRC license termination criteria applicable to such materials: NRC's 1981 "Branch Technical Position on Disposal or Onsite Storage of Thorium or Uranium >From Past Operations", [46 FR 52061]. The most stringent criterion in this policy prescibes a 10 pCi/g total uranium soil cleanup level (about 5 pCi/g U-238) for free release of contaminated properties.

More important, such levels are well below the 600 pCi/g total uranium and the 15 pCi/g Ra-226 cleanup levels currently being implemented by the Army Corps of Engineers at the Linde site. Therefore, future users of this site will face exposure to many times the concentrations of these radioactive materials actually present in their own backyards.

The major reason most of the FUSRAP (Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program) sites discussed in the USA Today series have not been properly managed is that, despite a 1978 Congressional law specifically requiring such regulation, the NRC subsequently failed to regulate uranium wastes generated prior to 1978.

The NRC continues to ignore this responsibility despite affected citizens' petitions and even an unfavorable federal court decision. In a March 8, 2000 letter responding to the following query by Senator Robert F. Bennett: "Would you agree that the decision in Kerr-McGee v. NRC (903 F.2d 1. D.C. Cir. 1990) supports NRC regulating all FUSRAP waste?", current NRC Chairman Richard Meserve responded: "Yes. I believe the decision in Kerr-McGee v. NRC does tend to support the NRC regulation of pre-1978 FUSRAP waste."

NOTE: For a more detailed discussion of the Army's "cleanup" at the Tonawanda, NY site please see: <http://freenet.buffalo.edu/~cb955>.

Sincerely,

James Rauch technical analyst F.A.C.T.S. (For A Clean Tonawanda Site), Inc.

---------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

New Study Indicates Brain Damage To Gulf War Veterans

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In a study released Thursday, researchers say they have found a strong link between brain cell loss on the left side of the brain in sick Gulf War veterans and abnormal over-production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter chemical important in such conditions as degenerative brain diseases. The UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas study, published in the American Medical Association's Archives of Neurology, links brain cell loss in the left basal ganglia of sick Gulf War veterans with out-of-control production of a brain neurotransmitter chemical called dopamine.

With fewer total brain cells, the remaining dopamine-producing cells become over-responsive and produce too much dopamine.

"This finding gives increased importance to our earlier brain scan evidence of brain damage in these veterans," said Dr. Robert Haley, professor of internal medicine. "Showing that the degree of brain cell injury directly affects the level of brain dopamine production suggests that the brain damage may be having a real effect on these veterans' brain function and is not just a coincidental finding."

In the June issue of Radiology, UT Southwestern researchers reported that sick Gulf War veterans had 9 percent fewer brain cells in the left basal ganglia than healthy veterans. Previous research has shown that brain damage in the left basal ganglia causes a dramatic increase in dopamine production, while brain damage in the right basal ganglia has less effect.

The latest study found dopamine production was approximately twice as high in the sick veterans with the worst brain cell damage as in the normal veterans.

The UT Southwestern researchers said more study is necessary to determine the significance of this finding, but one possibility is that long-term neuro-degenerative illness may occur in some people as a result.

"We hypothesize that with injury to the brain cells that normally control dopamine production, the cells at first go wild, overproducing dopamine," said Dr. Frederick Petty, a UT Southwestern professor of psychiatry and staff psychiatrist at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "The question is whether, over time, these over-stimulated cells will wear out and die. If so, these patients could develop degenerative brain diseases such as Parkinson's disease."

Petty said knowing that veterans could develop such diseases gives researchers time to pursue effective treatments. Doctors performed magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy imaging on 12 sick veterans and 15 well veterans to measure the amount of neuron damage in the basal ganglia. A series of blood tests performed by Petty measured levels of various breakdown products of dopamine, which showed the dopamine production problems.

The researchers decided to study basal ganglia neurons and dopamine production because the symptoms of Gulf War syndrome strongly resemble early symptoms of well-studied degenerative diseases of the basal ganglia like Huntington's, Wilson's and Fahr's diseases. Typical symptoms of Gulf War syndrome include chronic fatigue, dizziness and attacks of vertigo, general body pain, attention and concentration problems, personality changes, depression, and tremor.

In 1997 Haley and colleagues defined three Gulf War syndromes in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Syndrome 1, commonly found in veterans who wore pesticide-containing flea collars, is characterized by impaired cognition. Syndrome 2, called confusion-ataxia, the most severe and debilitating of the syndromes, is found among veterans who said they were exposed to low-level nerve gas and experienced side effects from anti-nerve gas, or pyridostigmine bromide (PB), tablets. Syndrome 3, characterized by central pain, is found in veterans who wore insect repellent with high concentrations of DEET and experienced side effects from the PB tablets.

Other UT Southwestern authors of the study include Dr. James L. Fleckenstein, professor of radiology; Dr. W. Wesley Marshall, clinical instructor of internal medicine; Dr. George G. McDonald, a former assistant professor of radiology; and Gerald L. Kramer, a research biologist at the Dallas VA Medical Center. - By Theresa Merola

[Contact: Theresa Merola]
15-Sep-2000

Comments:
Oak Ridge also appears somewhat high in ALS, and one common connection is the fluorides effects with disrupt endocrine systems and also affect the neurological system.

Looks like one more good solid indicator of the toxic damages is coming into view.